


A Temporary Madness

by mattmetzger



Series: A Temporary Madness [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 07:46:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 76,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattmetzger/pseuds/mattmetzger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of two lives becoming one - which is easier said than done when one's divorced, the other's neurotic, and both suffer from the unfortunate malady of being friends with James T. Kirk. And it all began with a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: So, this is the prologue to a long, long, long Spones epic, with humour and plot and character development and all that nice stuff. For those of you who like my mixture of sarcasm, angst, hurt/comfort and gritty love, this is the thing.
> 
> PS: When I say long, I freakin' mean it.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.

So there's this guy.

He's not that interesting. He's a little older than the fashion, and he's starting to get a line or two that weren't there before, and sometimes he wakes up in the morning and his back aches. He's just like every other man who thought he was invincible on the football field at fifteen. He's nothing special.

His life isn't anything special either. He turned right one too many times, and made some decisions that maybe he'd take back and maybe he wouldn't. He turned right to look at the posters in the dentist's office, and figured at the grand old age of nine that the white coat looked better than the suit any day. He turned right when he was thirteen, figuring football was a better way to impress Sandy Meyer than ice hockey, and look where that got his knees. He turned right when he was eighteen again, and danced with the redhead instead of the blonde, and then he turned right at the clinic and said, "I've never believed in shirking my responsibilities."

Maybe he should have turned left once or twice, and maybe he shouldn't, but here he is: the cold, wet smog of a San Francisco evening – early April, and cooler than April has any right to be this far south of Canada, but California's never had nothing on Mississippi and summers on the quadrangle outside the teaching hospitals, with the redhead from the school dance. And Mississippi didn't ever have anything on Georgia either, not on the homeland with her rolling heat and the bask and slide of country personalities like snakes on the road.

He turned right all the way outta Georgia, and somehow ended up California. A right turn is subjective.

And he's more ordinary here than California would like to admit. The prom dance redhead is gone, living in some white house with a white fence and by now, probably seeing some other man from someone else's school dance in some other year. He's still got a wedding ring, but it's been remoulded and it hugs the wrong finger. There's still a white stripe where it used to go.

He's still turning right. He drives a hybrid car, and he tries to cut down on his drinking now and then, and he nods to his neighbours without really talking to most of them. He doesn't smile much, but he's got a laugh that all his patients love him for. He's good with children, and he's good with the elderly, and he snaps and snarls at everyone between except pregnant ladies and the pretty nurse in radiology with the big dark eyes.

And this guy, he's just one guy in a million other guys just like him. So maybe he's a bit smarter – he's a doctor – and maybe he's a bit richer – he's a doctor – and maybe he has a momma back home in Georgia who cares even if she can't remember his middle name half the time, which is more than most people, and maybe he had a poppa that taught him how to punch the other kid in the playground and defend to the death your right to give daisies to Lucy Breckwood in the spring, 'cause that's more than most people too, but...he's just a guy. He's just this guy.

Only this guy is – not the right place at the right time, but he knows people. He knows a person, specifically, and he knows the right person, even though he doesn't know that that other guy is the right guy.

So there's this theory.

Every person on Earth is connected to every other person on Earth by six steps. And that makes everyone sound all interconnected and pieced together only that's not how it works because even with those steps, how many billions of people do you never meet? How many will you never meet? Even if you're best buddies with that guy that did that year in Borneo, you're never going to know any people from Borneo just from that guy.

And you never think about the missed ones – or most people don't, and this guy is turning right, and he's most people. He never thinks about it, and he doesn't have to. You don't have to think about it.

Only there was this one bridge between them – the Georgian guy knew an Iowan guy. And that Iowan guy...

That Iowan guy is just a guy. He's good with his hands, and he fixes things for people, and he can spend all evening charming an old lady while fixing her boiler then go out and kick her six foot grandson's ass in a downtown bar. He's fucked and fought and fled, and he wears bad jeans, and he's got these eyes like the sky in northern California, away from the city lights. He's kind of handsome in that rough, masculine way, but his skin's not too good and his eyebrows are too big and he has this arrogance about him that pisses most people off. He's just a guy too.

Only the guy from Iowa turns left. He had this great job, and he ditched it to fix boilers. He had this great girl, and he jumped state. He had this Mom and this brother, and he hasn't heard from them in years, and he had this bike that would be worth a fortune, only he tossed the keys to another turning-right guy in the ass-end of a dustbowl nowhere and walked away.

And sometimes this Iowan guy turns right, goes right with the Georgian guy. Sometimes he rolls those California-blue eyes and pays someone else to fix his guttering instead of breaking his neck. Sometimes he calls before coming over. Sometimes he goes places in a car instead of a bike, or walking through dodgy areas at five in the morning.

And sometimes this Iowan guy takes the Georgian guy left with him. Sometimes he takes him to mountain tops to scream at God and drink beer. Sometimes he shows him engine oil and the inside of a Kawasaki and they emerge grinning like the schoolchildren they haven't been for years. Sometimes, he gets him to admit things, and sometimes he laughs and keeps secrets, and sometimes he doesn't.

And then one day, this Iowan guy forced this Georgian guy on a left-turn, and the Georgian guy collided with this other guy – a foreign guy, who doesn't say a whole lot and has these hands like he should play the piano and this grace like he's maybe not just a guy but something different after all...and when you crash into people, you can back up and go around and forget, and then you never really met at all – or you can take notice. And when you crash because someone made you crash, you're gonna – most people – you're gonna take more notice.

So the Georgian took notice, and the Iowan guy didn't even realise what he'd done, and nobody knew what the foreign guy thought at all.

So there's this guy.

And he turned left and crashed into this other guy turning right.

And then there were these two guys. Together.


	2. Arc One, Part One

Once, the ninth of April would have meant taking the day off from the hospital – or the clinic, or the medical school, or – whatever. It would have meant taking the day off, handing a squalling child over to her babysitter for the day, and going...somewhere. Once, dinner by the river and a drive out into the country, some half-hearted stargazing and then some gazing at something entirely different.

But that had been two years ago. Three, four, five years ago. That hadn't been last year, and it wasn't today, and it wouldn't be another ninth of April ever again.

Now, the ninth of April was...

It had been a quiet shift. Eight hours of the odd broken limb, and he was signed off before the first trickles of the early drinkers had begun to drift in – and there wouldn't be many anyway. It was a Monday night; all the serious drunks were still recovering from the weekend.

Normally, McCoy liked the quiet shifts. He could actually stay and talk to the regulars in the intake wards. He could go on the meal round with Christine and brighten up the geriatric ward by actually letting them play the fifties jazz that Dr. Puri hated with a passion. He could even, God forbid, get some paperwork done.

But on the ninth...

There was just nothing to take his mind off it. His brain had woken up that morning and kicked right into gear with there's nobody here. Jocelyn was gone. He wasn't waking up an hour and a half before the alarm because there was a toddler trying to climb up into the bed with them and kneeing him in the crotch or the ribs in the process. And he couldn't even go downstairs and grump at his wife for letting JoJo having sweets before breakfast.

He didn't hate her. He'd never hated her, not really, and he wasn't even all that angry anymore. No use pretending – their marriage had been doomed from the outset, and at least he got to see Jo every weekend. She'd been more than fair. And sure, he hadn't liked getting divorced, and he was suspicious about how fast she'd moved on, and he still woke up most mornings wishing they had tried just that bit harder, but he wasn't exactly broken like he had been in the immediate fallout. He wasn't totally ruined by it. He was alright.

Just alright, though.

He still missed her. He didn't really love her anymore, if he ever had, but he missed her. He missed being married. He missed having someone waiting when he left work; he missed texts asking when he'd be home, or messy jumbles of letters saying Jo had gotten hold of her cell again. He missed her - her perfume, her shoes by his in the hall, her blouses hung up in the walk-in closet in their bedroom, and finding stray pairs of reading glasses all over the house and – the house. He missed their house, with the cracked kitchen tiles, and the stain on the window seat, and the constant mess of a small child. His new house was fine, but it wasn't their house.

He didn't have pencil marks on the walls in Tenth Avenue.

So a quiet shift...at least something – something – meant something else to think about besides his missing family. Let him stop counting until his next weekend with a little girl hanging off his hand and begging to go over the bridge just one more time, Daddy... – he'd have crashed the bus himself just to have something to do, and then Dr. Puri had turned round at quarter to seven and said, "Nothing's going on, Len, you might as well get yourself home."

Dr. Puri was only ever relaxed one day in every three hundred and sixty-five, and he had to choose the ninth of fucking April.

He didn't feel depressed, exactly – and hell, even if he did, a bottle of Jack and an evening with his feet up and a selection of his favourite, nothing-to-do-with-ever-having-had-a-family-and-more-like-being-a-student-again movies would have sorted him out just fine for the rest of the day – but the low-hanging cloud suited his mood, and the traffic made him feel at home, almost, jammed amongst a hundred other people feeling just the damn same. Probably about their ex-wives and shared kids too.

The ninth of April hadn't been the wedding anniversary. He hadn't liked their wedding anniversary – middle of October, fucking miserable no matter where in the damn country you spent it – and he'd stuck to the ninth of April, their original anniversary (in his mind, anyway). She'd liked it once. She'd always laughed and bragged to her friends how they had two anniversaries. That was how great they were. Her husband took her out and pretended to listen to her stories about the bitchy receptionist twice a year.

Only that was how great they weren't anymore.

On the ninth of April, their high school had announced the date of the senior prom. He'd wasted no time, and asked her to go that very afternoon, and they'd been an explosive item ever since. They broke up when he went to medical school, and got back together halfway through when she showed up at his dorm room in nothing more than a pair of stockings and a sweater. They'd had two pregnancy scares, and a year of hell when she'd gotten an abortion and not told him until he'd seen her name on a test results file in the clinic during the middle of his clinical skills exam. And then she'd gotten pregnant again, not six months after his graduation, and he'd wanted a family, and he offered her a faux-gold ring and they'd moved to San Francisco in time to set up home in a tiny apartment with a drawer for a crib ready for their little girl, and she'd lugged the baby about while studying for her law exams, and he'd been in the emergency room twelve hours a day just to keep them afloat in a city more expensive than the biggest casino in the south.

And they were a family – he came home at all hours of the night, exhausted, and she'd be up with their crying daughter on her shoulder and a microwave meal half-defrosted on the bench, and she'd scowl at him over the top of her glasses and say, "I'm just asking for one fucking hour, Len, is that too much to ask?" And he'd snap back something caustic, about his hours and his pay and how her family weren't exactly sending food parcels to help, and then he'd go to bed and nurse a headache through the day, only to get up for the night shift and begin all over again.

And then one November, with a howling toddler on her hip and one argument too many, she'd just upped and said, "This isn't going to work, Len. We never shoulda done it."

By the ninth of April, he was divorced. He'd been married for three damn years, and his momma couldn't talk about it, and his poppa died not six months later swearing up and down they were tricking an old man on his deathbed, that his Lenny would never have divorced nobody, not in a million years, he would never have done that to their baby girl.

Only they had – they'd had to, in the end, because it was all well and good living and loving while you were both always working, but eventually you had to learn about each other too, and somehow they'd never done that. They'd always been young and stupid and having fun; they hadn't thought about things like arguments over the goddamn gas bill, and you spent how much on diapers? And he didn't really regret the divorce, so much, and he could go and pick up Jo from her momma's and make polite conversation now, even if they weren't friends, but...

It wasn't Jocelyn he missed, really, but home. He wanted to go home – and there wasn't any such place.

He had made a small life for himself in the year since the final divorce papers came through, though. He made a tidy wage, and with no family and no saving for more children and no vacations, he kept it all as well – and had secured himself a tidy home in a quiet suburb of San Francisco itself. He kept a shoddy lawn, but a pristine kitchen, and his meticulous care of his car drew smirks and snickers from his new neighbours – and thus he met Jim Kirk.

Jim Kirk lived in the house opposite: built to be identical, and a world apart. It had all the same room dimensions, the same cheap-wood stairs, the same tiny porch with a leaky overhang – but Jim's house was nothing like McCoy's. Its colour scheme – if 'scheme' was appropriate – was the bastard love child of bad taste and colourblindness; a gaudy yellow bathroom lit up most of the upper floor by itself, and the only carpet in the place that wasn't lily-white or bright blue was the plain beige of the room he rented to his lodger. Jim's lawn was littered with car parts, the garage was permanently wide open and filled with absolute crap, and he habitually left his door open and roamed through his territory in less clothing than was publicly acceptable.

Jim Kirk was bold as brass – a cross between a southerner for sociability, and a northerner for lack of manners. With twelve hours of McCoy moving in, Jim had been on his doorstep with two bottles of beer and tips on how to avoid getting sucked into the never-ending conversation that was a simple 'hello' to Mr. Archer two doors down. With a week, he had dragged McCoy out to three different bars and displayed where his funds went (on poorly-played games of pool and even worse attempts at hustling) without shame or care. And within a month, he had more or less taken up residence as a permanent feature of McCoy's life, somewhere between downright annoying and grudgingly nice.

In the immediate aftermath of the divorce, Jim had been a welcome distraction. He was a tenacious guy, but pleasant in spite of it; he was an idiot, but well-meaning enough that McCoy didn't mind; he was cocksure and arrogant, but young enough to grow up yet. He was old enough to know that things weren't always okay, and he had his own shadows and scars – but he was also young enough to bounce back from everything with more force than strictly necessary. He had brushed off McCoy's anger and displacement like it was nothing more than mist, and wriggled and squirmed his way past the gruff aggression and the irritated snarling like he knew – like he knew, right from the start, what lay beneath.

Hell, maybe he had. Jim Kirk was a lot of things, but he wasn't a stupid man.

And used to Jim Kirk – a year today since the divorce, so eleven months since that bottle of Peroni was waved in his face at the front door – he wasn't surprised to find the objectionable man himself waiting in the twilight at the gate when McCoy pulled the car up.

Jim just looked like a jackass. He always had; McCoy had never seen him in any other state. All leather jacket and beat-up jeans and grubby white t-shirt that had seen better centuries, and in dire need of a shave and a haircut before he ended up looking like something conspiracy theorists would sell their mothers to get photographs of, he lounged on the gatepost and grinned at McCoy's headlights without even squinting the glare. He had a smile that infuriated or charmed at equal turns – a lazy smear of expression across the lower half of his face, two-thirds mocking and one-third relaxation. He had, he claimed, a winner's smile; the amount of fights it caused, McCoy doubted the assertion.

"You're early," he said around that smile. "I haven't even had the time to check out the night school students yet!"

"Lucky for them," McCoy grumbled. "Whaddaya want, Jim?"

"Monday night!" he said cheerfully. "Two for one deals at Harry's, and those killer cheeseburgers. And fuck you, I don't care if they'll kick my heart to the curb, it'd be a great way to go."

McCoy grunted. Even he could see why someone would want to gorge themselves to death on the burgers at Harry's. Even if everything else on the menu was seriously questionable.

"Thanks, Jim, but..."

"Do I look like I'm asking?" Jim drawled. "Look at this face. This is my serious business face. You come and get a couple of beers and a monster cheeseburger – look, there'll even be this vegetarian guy there so you can gross him out with your autopsy stories."

"I'm not up for a party."

"It's not a party."

"So why in the hell is 'some vegetarian guy' going to be there?"

"Because I used to work with him, Jesus," Jim rolled his eyes. "I do get to know people the normal way, y'know."

"So this is the only other person you know, aside from me, that you haven't slept with?"

Jim snorted. "There are loads of people I haven't slept with, jerk. And trust me, if he even hinted, I'd be in there. With knobs on."

"Ew."

"Yeah, bad phrase."

"Stop watching British movies."

"Never," he said breezily, peeling himself from the fencepost. "C'mon, Bones, it'll keep you busy and hating everyone I associate with on instinct. And it'll give him someone to talk to that isn't me and his lousy ex."

Oh, that sounded promising.

"Jim, I am not getting involved in someone else's drama. I get enough of that at work."

"No drama, promise. Except me," he finally unwound himself from the post. "C'mon, man. Go get changed – don't shave, you'll pull if you don't shave, ladies like that scruffy look, trust me – and come out for a beer or three."

"You said two."

"Whatever," Jim said dismissively. "Trust me. Trust me."

Later – much later, years later, years and lives later – McCoy would say that trusting Jim was something that people should do once and only once, and deny having ever done it at all for the rest of their lives.

He trusted him.


	3. Arc One, Part Two

Spock had come to California fresh out of university, metaphorically clutching his degree certificate in one hand, and the recommendations of his tutors in the other, to land feet-first in a brand new biotechnological research group that had, five years ago, just begun to break into the possibilities of nanotechnology. He had walked into San Francisco young, feeling out of place in this alien city full of alien people, and had found relief in returning home each vacation to amused acceptance and sympathies over the strange habits of Californians and their sheer enthusiasm for everything.

Things had changed - he no longer left the state much, and the sympathisers were mostly gone, and he'd gotten used to the tambourine-wielding hippies on the plaza across from his workplace - but Californians were still strange enough to qualify as an entirely different species.

He had – settled, in the intervening years, although everything had changed. His life was unrecognisable now, but it was his all the same – they were his monthly meetings with Christopher, and they were his excursions with Jim into the more comfortable countryside, and it was his apartment with the meticulously dusted blinds and the industrial bolt on the inside of the door. Perhaps it was a strange way to think (certainly not one of which his father, or his father's family, would have approved) but it was how he did. American materialism, superimposed on the thought processes of a boy grown up.

He still felt out of place in San Francisco, on the whole. The people were soft; the lights were sharp. It was the opposite of Chicago; it was nothing like the faint memory of Sendai at all. His family were gone, his partner with the sympathies of feeling so out-of-place among Californian brilliance now a former partner, and the few friends that he had collected through the general awkwardness and upset that had been his youth scattered to every corner of the waking world.

It was still his life, and Spock was aware enough to know why he clung to it so fiercely.

If not for Jim, perhaps he would have felt displaced enough to finally leave San Francisco – and California – behind. The grimy, sharp edges of Chicago were still unbearable after her passing, but there were other cities equally shadowy to call home, in time – Pittsburgh, New York, Detroit – where he could have found work and a home, away from the sunlight and the shimmering, untouched brilliance that was California. There were still places in which he could have lost himself and begun again, erasing all of those who'd known him, and buried his secrets so deep that they would never have been found. If he sometimes checked rent prices in Portland, it was no real surprise.

But there was Jim to consider.

Jim was the one thing in Spock's life that he had not planned. There had been no room for Jim, and no plan to accommodate his arrival, and Spock still stood unsure of how he had gotten in, and more to the point, how he had remained in, even after Spock's realisation that, somehow, this obnoxious man called himself a friend.

And Jim was obnoxious.

Jim had been, once upon a time, a colleague. When the company for whom Spock worked had expanded, riding on the success of developments in medical prosthetics that they had pioneered, places in the labs suddenly became coveted among the scientific community. And scientists did not make for experts in human resources – which was when Jim, a twenty-something barely in possession of a high school diploma, but definitely in possession of the sharpest eye for humanity that Spock had ever witnessed, had walked into the building, slapped a CV on the desk of the CEO himself, and announced his available hours.

Management – which is what Jim essentially became in short order – did not mingle with the scientists, typically, but Jim was the exception. Jim had no time for the other recently-graduated, suit-filling, wet-behind-the-ears (Jim's words, not Spock's) human resources employees. Within days, he had walked into Spock's lab, looked over his shoulder, and demanded an explanation. Spock had obliged, received a dazed look of complete incomprehension, and then: "Is that monster of a Kawasaki in the parking lot yours?"

Spock had considerable difficulty reading other people, between a seemingly natural deficiency and his difficulty with the finer nuances of American behaviour as a foreigner, but in retrospect, it was quite apparent that Jim had formed an instant opinion of him – and a positive one – on this meeting alone.

They had not become friends, per se, thanks to Spock's other commitments and time limitations, until a year and a half later, when Spock's semblence of a life in California was shattered around him and he was left alone in a tiny apartment on the other side of the city, adrift in a sea of glittering shards that was an unforgiving sunshine state. He had found himself – lost, truly lost, for the first time, and would quite possibly have slipped away if not for Jim's ability to catch that which he didn't know was falling.

At least, back then, Spock presumed he hadn't known.

How could he have known? Jim was a friend at work, perhaps, but they had never met outside of the building. Jim knew no face or real identity to put to the emergency contact on Spock's personnel file, and he'd certainly never talked about personal things with Spock; he knew nothing until Spock had filed the changes to his circumstances – contacts, address, telephone numbers – and had blinked over the computer at him.

"Wait, wait, wait," he'd said. "You were with someone? As in, meals out and sex in and the whole shebang?"

Spock had had absolutely no idea what on earth he was talking about, but Jim had apparently reached his own conclusions, and laughed.

"Holy shit, so you're actually human!" he exclaimed – and the world shifted, yet again, under Spock's feet.

It was then and there that Jim formed their Monday nights: a weekly gathering, sometimes just the pair of them and sometimes external friends brought into the fold, in a backstreet bar near to Jim's home by the simple name of Harry's. And perhaps Jim was sharper than Spock had originally given him credit for: in the aftermath of the breakdown (or break-up, whichever was the preferred Americanism at the time) he had been forceful with his demands that Spock socialise, at the very least with him, and suddenly they had been six months down the line and Spock was not entirely sure how he had come to this, still subjecting himself to Jim's insistence and Jim's smile, and still...not particularly minding the intrusion.

Fifteen months after that first Monday night, and Spock was still unsure.

Perhaps it was simply Jim. The man had a draw – a charisma – that was powerful, exerting itself effortlessly. And in the beginning, Jim had quite obviously focused on him. Spock was not so blind in the ways of the American man not to notice the crush that Jim had nursed for some months into their friendship – although it had since passed on with all the quiet peace of an elderly patient past their time – and it had undoubtedly been a source of Jim's insistence on his company. But things had changed beyond that, in ways Spock could not quite name, and fifteen months down the line, Jim was still as insistent on his company as he had been from that morning in his office on the third floor. (Although he still took to inexplicably badmouthing Spock's ex, despite their never having met and Jim having absolutely no details of either their lives together, or why they had gone their separate ways.) And part of Spock was grateful for the company – he lived a long way from his biological family – what remained of them – and was not in contact with the majority of his childhood friends (not that there had been many), and did not have a good enough grasp of American idiom and popular culture to know when people were saying what they meant, and had a natural block on reading people regardless that his mother had more than once voiced to be a mild form of autism, so found socialising to be somewhat uncomfortable at the best of times.

Although associating with Jim was rapidly updating his knowledge of American behaviour, at the very least.

When Jim had quit the company approximately eight months ago to become self-employed (Spock did not know what a 'grunt' was meant to be, and did not care to ask, in case it was a new term for a prostitute and Jim would start getting even more lewd ideas than he already had) he had forcibly kept contact with Spock, insisting that their Monday nights were not to change. And although Spock very rarely allowed others to dictate his life, and had resisted such attempts since his teenage years, he had...permitted the interference. Resisting Jim simply made life more difficult, but there was also a sense of...

Either out of a sense of social isolation, or a sense of genuine regard for Jim, Spock had permitted the order, and so he habitually left work on time on Monday nights, returned to his apartment to change into something approaching casual (he was not permitting Jim's campaign of getting him into a hoodie) and walk the six blocks to Harry's, a basement bar in downtown San Francisco within spitting distance of the tramline, and that served food that was questionable at best, and alcohol that was questionable at worst.

Harry's was a quiet bar – the sort known to locals alone, and rarely permeated by the tourist trade or the 'out-of-town-asshole' trade. Dingy and dark, it was cleaner than it (and the sticky floor) looked, but still dirty enough that using the bathroom was not recommended. The glasses were wiped out with the same greasy rag, but the cook at least remembered to wash his hands. It was not Spock's choice of bar, and yet he was still – comfortable in it. Despite being a foreigner, and despite Jim's loudly broadcasted flirting, and despite not wearing blue jeans, worn-out boots and dubiously-stained shirts, Spock could relax in Harry's – and did so on a weekly basis, usually with Jim's arm over his shoulders and challenges at pool being muttered in his ear. The ninth of April, he anticipated, would be no different.

He was, in fact, incorrect.

This time, there would be another man with Jim, with fierce dark eyes and a brusque manner, and a something as indefinable as Jim's something, that would catch Spock's attention and, for the first time in a long time, hold that attention.

The ninth of April would change his life, and he wouldn't even see it coming.


	4. Arc One, Part Three

_Harry's_ was a quiet bar, as far as San Francisco went, but dingy and dank enough that the rancid stink of alcohol and sweat and urine was like a slap in the face from a wet diaper when Jim pushed open the door. McCoy did not grimace – he had smelled worse, and hell, bars back in Mississippi or Georgia smelled just as damn bad in the heavy _heat_ – but resigned himself to smelling like a cheap whorehouse when he got home, and fumbled for money. If he was going to smell like a cheap whorehouse, at least he was going to damn well enjoy it.

"Gaila, my girl!" Jim crowed, leaning over the sticky wood to kiss the barmaid. She giggled, her breasts wobbling like the skin on day-old soup in an earthquake, and Jim grinned at either her or the breasts with unashamed glee. "Two of your dirtiest, and your phone number."

"Two Bud and a nothing," she replied cheerfully. "Hi, Lenny," she added, winking in McCoy's direction and pouting when he ignored her. The last redhead had been disastrous enough, and he knew enough about Gaila's activities to know what he'd probably get if he took her up on the offer.

Probably whatever Jim had had last, come to think of it.

"How you don't tap that is anyone's guess," Jim said mournfully.

"How you still have functioning testicles is anyone's guess," McCoy returned flatly.

"Yeah, yeah," Jim said, craning his neck to peer up at the booths surrounding the empty row of pool tables. "I _do_ know what a condom is."

"But do you use 'em?"

"Eh. Mostly," Jim shrugged, bending forward to kiss Gaila's hand when she gave him his change, and scooped up his bottle. "C'mon, man, let's get a game in. Warm up before Spock comes and kicks my ass."

"Who?"

"Ex-colleague."

"The vegetarian guy?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if you'd mentioned he was gonna hand your ass to you, I wouldn't have been so reluctant to come down," McCoy drawled. Jim was a great guy, but he was an arrogant asshole at the best of times, and McCoy silently (or sometimes not) applauded everyone who managed to take him down a peg for even a minute or two. Gaila, of the perpetually elusive phone number, and Jim's lodger Sulu, of the perpetually throwing-things-at-Jim-with-ridiculous-accuracy fame, were top of the list. Unfortunately, it was a short list.

They got in two games – and another bottle each – of pool relatively undisturbed over the next hour. _Harry's_ was not an especially social place – people tended to ignore one another, and that suited McCoy just fine – and they were left largely alone, save for a very quick drop-by hello from one of the other bartenders, Janice, on her way home. Aside from her brief interruption, they were left alone, for McCoy to hold his own (just) against Jim's more-or-less equally poor skills, and forget the date and the day and, hell, his own _life_ amongst the sticky floorboards and the crack of the game and the heavy, dank stink of alcohol, sweat and crushed idealism.

McCoy forgot, in fact, about the impending arrival of Jim's former colleague until boots smacked on the sticky boards with a wet _thunk-thunk_ , and a flat voice stated, "I trust that you have found someone within your own ability range to challenge, Jim?"

Jim completely mis-shot, sinking the cue ball and cursing, before handing the solitary cue back to McCoy and swinging around to thump the stranger on the shoulder and – grin at him.

Ah.

"You are so late it's fucking ridiculous," he said, and McCoy snorted in the middle of taking his shot. "Shut up, Bones. What kept you, Spock?"

"I opted to eat at home rather than risk my health here."

"Wise move," McCoy called, sinking a ball and moving around the table to take another.

"Bones, what part of shut up did you miss?" Jim groused. "And Spock, you shut up too. Those burgers, man, those _burgers_. I don't care if they're dead cow, it's a sacrifice worth making."

"In this area, Jim, they are more likely to be dead cat."

"Um, ew," McCoy heard the crack of a hand on leather again – presumably Jim clapping the stranger's shoulder. "Anyway. Intros. That's Bones. He's trying to kick my ass, but he's totally failing, so you should kick _his_ ass and show him how it's done."

"Indeed."

"In fact, you do that. I need beer. And food. You're so late, I'm starving to death here."

With that, he stomped back to the bar, leaving McCoy to straighten from his miss and stare at –

Well. A man, first and foremost. A man probably his own height, with a blank face and a shave so close it looked painful. A man in a leather jacket that looked older than he did, and dark slacks that merged with equally dark boots, stuck to the floor in a parade rest. He had long, eerily white fingers wrapped around the body of a bottle of some foreign-sounding beer that McCoy didn't know _Harry's_ even served, and even as he was observed, the man took a healthy pull from said bottle, tilting his head back until his throat bobbed and pistoned in a swallow, the motion rippling down to his white undershirt, only a shade paler than his skin...

God _damn_ , but Jim knew how to pick his friends.

More than his appearance – and hey, it was a damn nice appearance – were his eyes. His face said just about jack-shit, but his eyes were dark and intense. McCoy couldn't read them, but there was something there that he'd like to, and they _examined_ him, almost picking and plucking at him visually in an attempt at categorisation; the man was either an artist or a scientist for the scrutiny, and McCoy couldn't tell which.

He took a gulp of his own beer. His mouth was _dry_. Shit, but he didn't need Jim to notice this reaction.

"'Bones'?"

The voice didn't help. Deep and smooth and somehow simultaneously devoid of an accent and sounding distinctly _not-Californian_ , it rolled over the vowel and never let go of the _s_ , the consonant dying on the man's tongue rather than being freed to the wet, poisoned air. _Foreign_ , McCoy's mind told him, and the rest of his brain crossed it out and wrote over it with _exotic_.

"Stupid nickname," McCoy grunted, coming around the table and sticking out a hand. "McCoy. Leonard McCoy."

His handshake was firm, the hand itself a little too cool, and the muscles powerful over slender, almost delicate bones. The doctor inside snapped over the slight bend to the ring finger, and the prominent thumb joint – _broken, old injury; dislocated, more recent_ – and he suppressed it.

"You're Spock, then?"

"That is correct." His accent was...odd, and the more he spoke, the more obvious it became. It was neither foreign nor American; there was an odd rhythm to his English, but it was flawless – perhaps too much so. And his name...he was an outsider, the proverbial stranger in a strange land, and McCoy felt a little like he'd stepped through the looking glass.

He cleared his throat, backed up, and scrabbled for something like normalcy. "You used to work with Jim, huh? Was he always this insufferable?"

Spock tilted his head, those dark eyes still fixated on McCoy's. "...I believe so."

McCoy snorted. "Figures. He's my neighbour. I've not even known him a year and he's runnin' my damn social life."

"Be grateful that is all that he is running, Mr. McCoy."

McCoy opened his mouth to correct the title – _Doctor_ , damn it, he'd worked too damn hard and too damn long to let people forget that – but instead what slipped out was: "Leonard."

Something moved behind the eyes.

"Leonard."

And damn it all if his own name had never sounded that good before.

* * *

The evening was hell.

It was hell like a bad marriage. You hated it, and you could walk out, but the idea was ridiculous. And so McCoy was torn, between the hell of Spock, and...the hell of going home and just imagining him instead of watching him.

He wasn't what McCoy had expected. He didn't say a whole lot, which was just so far from Jim that it was on another planet, and there was something slightly off in the way that he responded that suggested he was either a lot more foreign than he sounded, or there was something else going on. He wasn't loud, and he didn't crack shit jokes, and while he got through his first drink like it was water and he was in the Sahara, he didn't go back for another for a while. And Jim had said he was vegetarian. Just how in the hell were they friends?

Spock's unusual attitude aside, it didn't help that he was hot as all hell. McCoy might be approaching thirty and scarred from divorce and the trials of being a part-time father, but he wasn't fucking _dead_. Spock was _hot_. Legs all the way up to the nicest ass McCoy had ever seen, and it was torture to watch him bend over the table to take a shot. His slacks weren't tight, but they weren't loose either, and the fabric stretched _just so_ and the first time he did it, McCoy just about choked on a mouthful of beer, and Jim had given him a funny look. And then those goddamn _eyes_ – McCoy hadn't felt that flustered when someone looked at him in years. Just what in the hell was going on behind those eyes?

It was frustrating, because he was a goddamn adult, not a fourteen-year-old with an inappropriate hard-on for his math teacher, but he felt too warm every time Spock bent over the table, and he had to excuse himself to get another beer when he took off his jacket and suddenly there were these biceps on display, and then when Jim finally managed to sink a ball in the first round of destroying-Jim's-ego, Spock had said, "Your mathematical ability seems to be improving. Or your vision," without a trace of humour in his voice, and _bang_ , he was a sarcastic son of a bitch as well.

McCoy had been here before, but at least last time he'd seen it coming.

He excused himself early, in the end – he felt too flustered by the unexpected presence of someone attractive to make the continued alcohol consumption a good idea, and judging by the sly looks Jim was giving him, he'd been rumbled anyway, and Jim going into sneaky mode was a definite danger. So halfway through the third of Jim's beatings, he put down his empty bottle and made his excuses and headed out to the (relatively) fresh air of the street.

When he glanced over his shoulder at the door, Spock was watching him.


	5. Arc One, Part Four

His pager went off during the night, and between the emergency call-out, his regular shift, and the usual lack of interruption on a Wednesday, it conspired that it was Thursday before McCoy saw or heard from Jim again, pulling up into the driveway after work to find him lounging against the front door, wearing a white t-shirt, a shit-eating grin and some cocky confidence that had McCoy on edge before he even got out of the car.

"You," he said, sauntering over and jabbing a finger into the centre of McCoy's chest, "like Spock."

"Get off," McCoy shoved the hand away. "What's it to you?"

"So you do."

"Jesus, Jim, I met the guy for a couple of hours!"

"Don't even need that somedays," Jim said, and smirked. "So you do."

McCoy snorted. "He can outmove you without breaking a sweat, and puncture that infantile ego without thinking about it. Yeah, I like him."

"Yeah, but you _like_ him."

"Jesus, what are you, five? I don't know him."

"But _you like him_ ," Jim insisted as McCoy unlocked his front door, and blithely following him inside. "That's the first time I've seen you like anyone. It was kind of hilarious. And creepy."

"Gee, thanks."

"Welcome. So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing?"

Jim snorted, folding his arms and stalking McCoy into the kitchen. It was like having another kid. " _Nothing_? C'mon, Bones. You should hook up. It would be amazing."

McCoy eyed him.

"You'd kill each other," Jim clarified.

"Or you."

"Or me," he agreed. "C'mon, Bones. It'd do you good."

"Oh God, don't start your folk psychology bullshit on me."

"Bones, just listen for a sec, okay?" Jim said, dropping the joking tone and dropping himself into one of McCoy's kitchen chairs. "You're lonely. It's really obvious, you know? You work and work and work, and then some weekends you have your kid, and that's it. You wouldn't even come out to _Harry's_ if I didn't make you. And if you like him, and you do, then..."

"Jim, I appreciate what you're tryin' to tell me, but it's not that easy," McCoy grunted, rummaging through the fridge to begin throwing together a meal. "Just likin' someone isn't enough, and when you stop screwing around and actually try the whole settlin' down thing, you'll know what I mean. You can fall in love and it doesn't work; liking a complete stranger, that's only going to lead to a couple of awkward dates and then it'll fizzle out, just like every crush does."

"You must have crushed on your wife."

"And look where that got me."

"But look where it got other people!" Jim pushed. "If you don't even _try_ , then..."

"Jim, just drop it," McCoy said flatly. "Give it a week or so and it'll be out of my system anyway. I've never been one to sleep around, but I get a liking for people at the drop of a hat. Give it a week and it'll be all over. 'Sides, not just me to think about here. There's him too."

Jim snorted. "Yeah, well, God knows."

McCoy eyed him suspiciously.

"Look, I might be buddies with him, but Spock's not exactly chatty about his feelings, you know what I'm saying?" Jim shrugged. "Can I raid your orange juice?"

"Sure."

"Awesome. Anyway," he continued, snatching the half-empty carton from the fridge and a glass off the draining board. "I've known Spock for, shit, three years now? And I don't know all that much about him. He has this way of letting you think you know him, and then someone asks a question and you have no freakin' clue."

"What's your point, Jim?"

"My _point_ is that even I could see he was looking at you," Jim said, waving a hand absently in the air. "I've never seen him show any interest in anyone, period. _Never_. Not even that girl that used to crush madly on him at work. It's like he just doesn't see people. But he saw you."

"Good for me," McCoy said dryly. "So I should date a guy that I don't know, just to satisfy your criteria of how many people I should meet in a week?"

"Well, maybe not that far," Jim said. "But..."

"Jim, _no_. I appreciate your concern, but..."

"No, hear me out!"

"...I don't know him, we probably don't have anythin' in common, and it'll just be downright awkward. I'm not dating him."

"Fine," Jim said. "But you should get to know him."

"Why?"

"How do you know you don't have anything in common?"

McCoy groaned. He'd walked right into that one.

"I'm not dating him to find that out."

"Okay, whatever," Jim grinned. "But – you should keep coming to Harry's. Monday night. We're _regulars_."

McCoy was _screwed_.

* * *

The moment Spock had the door open more than three inches, Jim Kirk stuck his foot in it to keep it open, which did not bode well.

"I brought wine," he said.

"Your point being?" Spock asked.

"If I bring wine, you're obliged to give me food."

"Provided that I am preparing any food, and provided that I am remotely interested in your wine."

"Of course you are, it's good wine," Jim said flatly. "Plus I can wait."

Spock narrowed his eyes. Jim did not customarily bring gifts unless he wanted something. He certainly did not express interest in Spock's cooking; their diets were radically different, and Jim often pulled faces at anything and everything that Spock ate. (Spock would not admit to doing the same over Jim's dishes.) Jim _also_ did not typically visit on Thursday evenings; and he did not typically arrive unannounced either, in deference to Spock's preferred lifestyle of _routine_ over spontaneity.

Jim's _purpose_ , however, remained unclear.

"Why do you wish to partake of my cuisine?" Spock asked slowly.

"Do you do that to annoy me?" Jim asked. "C'mon, man, let me in."

"Do what?"

" _That_. Oh, never mind," Jim sighed. "C'mon. _Wine_ , and your best buddy in the whole world apart from your right hand."

"My...right hand," Spock said flatly.

"You know," Jim said, narrowing his eyes, "I'm not _actually_ sure whether you're serious there. Which is, y'know. Creepy. You _do_ get the euphemism, right?"

"Creepy is a euphemism in this context?"

"...Never mind," Jim said slowly, before shaking himself. "C'mon. Company?"

"I do not require such."

"Whatever, you're getting it. Let me in."

Spock stepped aside, catching the bottle from Jim's hand as he stepped into the living area and examining the label briefly before closing and bolting the door again, toeing Jim's abandoned shoes back onto the mat and following him towards the tiled area that denoted 'kitchen' from 'rest of apartment.'

"You're still freakishly clean," Jim commented, already rummaging in the fridge. "Also, you totally could make a stir-fry out of this. Let's do this."

"Jim, why are you here?"

"I can't visit you just because?"

"No," Spock said flatly. "It is uncharacteristic behaviour. You either want something, or wish to discuss something."

"Well, you haven't got anything I want except food."

"It is called pizza delivery."

"Touché," Jim allowed. "Fine. A catch-up."

Spock raised an eyebrow. This did not bode well.

"Just a good old gossip."

At all.

"What is it that you wish to discuss?"

" _Nothing_ ," Jim said. "Just, you know. Haven't seen you since Monday night, and Sulu's working tonight, and Bones' – McCoy's – kicked me out for the night, so – hey. How you been?"

Jim was smart, but Spock was smarter. Sulu and McCoy were not Jim's only friends, and not even Jim's only friends that Spock also knew. The fact that the two ends of his list coincided was not, in fact, coincidence.

"You wish to discuss Leonard."

" _Leonard_ , is it?"

"That is his name, is it not?"

"Sure, but..."

"And if you wish to pretend that I have not seen through your intentions tonight, and continue to reach the same point of discussion via a more scenic route of conversation, then I am quite willing to do so."

"Well, okay, but you brought him up."

"No, Jim," Spock said, finally beginning to gather the cooking utensils. "You did. What is it that you wish to discuss regarding Leonard?"

Jim shrugged, pouring out a glass of wine and leaning against the sink to watch Spock begin chopping...plant stuff. "You guys seemed to hit it off pretty good."

"...Continue."

Jim rolled his eyes. "Man, you're gonna make me do all the work. Fine. You were totally checking him out."

"I am failing to see your point, Jim."

"Oh dear God," Jim moaned. "You like him! You _liiiiiike_ him! Your heart does the thump-thump and your dick wants to do the..."

"I get the crude picture, Jim."

" _Sooo_ ," Jim drawled. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing."

"You can't do nothing."

"I believe that I can," Spock returned placidly.

"God, you're awful. Look. You like him. You have liked people before, and you have pursued relationships before. He is not a psychopath, an axe murderer, a conman, or a racist. Well, probably not a racist. He doesn't do drugs, he doesn't throw himself off cliffs at weekends, and – best part – I know for a fact that there aren't any psycho exes that will come after you with a blowtorch and a good alibi."

"While that is undoubtedly valuable information to any parties wishing to sexually or romantically pursue Leonard, I am not one of them."

"But _why_ ," Jim asked. "You wouldn't go after that gorgeous blonde at work; you wouldn't go after that frankly _unf_ chick with the legs all the way up to her armpits; you are apparently unfathomably the only person in the world who wouldn't go after me given plenty, plenty of chances; and now you won't go after Bones!"

"That is a fairly accurate summary, yes."

"C'mon, man. I know your last one screwed you over, but..."

"It is nothing to do with..."

"Yeah, I call crap," Jim said flatly. "C'mon, Spock," he leaned closer and nudged his shoulder. "I know you're not exactly a social butterfly, but this isn't good. Don't let one mistake turn you off people altogether."

"I am not," Spock said simply. "I simply do not see the sense in pursuing a fleeting interest – however you wish to interpret such an interest – in someone that I do not know."

"People do it all the time."

"Perhaps," Spock allowed calmly, dropping the first of the plants into the heated pan and raising his voice over the sizzle. "And others do not. I am one of the latter, Jim, and I have no desire to create another relationship at this time."

"And when _will_ you want to?" Jim pushed. "You can't just stay locked up in this little apartment all the time, you know."

"I am neither agoraphobic nor a recluse."

"You might as well be, for all the socialising you do," Jim said.

"Jim."

"I know, I know, but – c'mon," he shrugged. "You know I'm right. You're lonely here – you're lonely _alone_. I know you don't like having big groups of friends, but...even if it didn't work out that time, you liked having _someone_."

Spock paused, and that was enough to confirm Jim's suspicions. He sighed, and reached out for a brief one-armed hug.

"Joking aside, sometimes I reckon it would just be so much easier if it _were_ me, you know?" he murmured.

Spock nodded. "Perhaps."

"Just...think about it?" he asked quietly. "I'm...just kind of...worried. You've not been the same since then. You've not really been... _content_ , the way you used to be."

"Jim," Spock finally looked up at him, dead in the eye and _still_ with whatever he wished to say. "I _am_ alright."

"Yeah. But you could be better."


	6. Arc One, Part Five

Jim had this unsettling way, sometimes, of getting under Spock's skin when he chose to be serious, and so Spock was not entirely surprised to find himself lying awake that night, the narrow confines of the bed suddenly claustrophobic, and staring at a ceiling that was still vaguely unfamiliar, after fifteen months and a handful of days.

He had stopped _counting_ , but he was still _aware_ of the time passing, as if some part of his brain couldn't quite let go of it. The apartment was a temporary resting place; it was a base containing his things, but held all the normative value of the box in which one carried one's things when moving. The new route to work was still alien to him, as though to lose his concentration would be to get lost; he still reached for his garage keys upon his return, and found the empty gap on the keyring where they'd once been.

And yet he did not miss...well. There was no mourning for the loss of the person, simply the relationship. He missed, as Jim had said, 'having someone.' He had spent his life very much alone, very much _isolated_ , and to be given such a reprieve had been...

But it was over. He had no business in that upstairs flat with the view of the bay and the handpainted stars on the ceiling, and he never would again. Given the _choice_ , he would not have business there. Their efforts had resulted in nothing, or at least nothing that could have outweighed the sour taste of the end, and he did not regret the severance of that failing arrangement, but he missed...

Company, perhaps.

He was not particularly lonely in the traditional sense of being socially isolated. For a start, Jim rendered that very much impossible, regularly dragging Spock to various functions and social outings. To follow that up, despite Jim's allegations, Spock was perfectly capable of making his own friends. He had progressed perfectly well from a business relationship to genuine regard and friendship for Christopher Pike, the founder of a medical charity that was sponsoring Spock tens of thousands of dollars per calendar year to go towards his research into nerve regeneration. They met for coffee at least once a month, if Chris did not take to randomly turning up at the labs to oversee his research. Spock had also maintained a friendship with his first girlfriend, another Japanese immigrant by the unlikely moniker of T'Pring, a nickname generated by her American friends that she had adopted as her preferred term of address by the time they met in Spock's first year of university. Although their brief relationship had rapidly fallen by the wayside, they were very like-minded, and often spoke online deep into the night about their respective research, he in San Francisco and she in Berlin; it would have been, had they been able to truly love one another, a quite brilliant union. She was no longer physically _here_ , but she was a friend all the same, and one that Spock intended to keep, regardless of distance. And even when Chris and T'Pring and Jim were not around, Spock had his own appointments to keep: regular card nights with his colleagues (which were astonishingly complex given the mathematical capabilities of the persons involved), his Japanese classes on a Tuesday evening, and the regular appearance of his neighbour, a young Russian immigrant with a very sharp scientific mind, to discuss the latest theories. He was not _lonely_.

But he was alone. Perhaps it was part of growing older; perhaps it was merely having gotten used to the stability and company of deeper relationships after so many years of isolation. He had not been much bothered by becoming single again after he and T'Pring ended their romantic acquaintance, but he had missed her for a while; the experience had been similar with his subsequent partners, and now, once again, he missed not the person, but the romantic acquaintance.

This was much compounded by the fact that, over the last few years, his own peer group had begun to settle and marry and produce children. In a way, Spock rather envied them their familial nets as they began to weave them. Chris's fiancee of fourteen years had finally had enough of waiting and pushed for the actual wedding to take place, or not at all; needless to say, he would be married in the fall. Even T'Pring, not particularly prone to flights of romantic fancy, had begun to mention one of her male colleagues more and more often in their communications. And while Jim went through partners like other people went through underwear, it was much the same: he was always away with them, wrapped up in his latest fancy, and marking out once again that Spock was alone.

Perhaps he really was his father's son.

Still, loneliness was a poor reason to date someone, and whatever Jim's concern and however right he may be, it was not going to push Spock into any action regarding Leonard. They did not know each other, and once Leonard _did_ know him, he would – to use Chris' turn of phrase – run for the hills. Loneliness was bearable – even preferable, considering the backlash of his last failure. He would not be putting himself through that again for a man who, while very attractive and certainly interesting, would waste no more time on him than necessary once they came to know each other.

Spock turned over, and resolved to sleep it away.

The bed was still too narrow.

* * *

McCoy worked primarily in the emergency room – he was the best doctor in the _state_ for impromptu and quick surgery. His shifts were planned, but his pager permanently primed to go off at any moment, and most often on a Sunday night when someone realised that the case of alcohol poisoning on the overnight ward was something worse. The rest of the time, he worked daylight hours during the week, with Fridays off in exchange for taking a solid twelve hours on Sundays from the evening through until the next morning to help clear the weekend backlog.

It was just about the only reason he hadn't come out of his divorce hating his ex-wife.

If there was one thing Joss, as a lawyer herself, had grasped, it was that Jo was attached to her father, and however much they had argued and realised that they hadn't _known_ one another, neither Joss nor Leonard had wanted to tear their little girl in half with the same marriage that was tearing _them_ apart. So the one thing that Joss had allowed him was weekend rights, every second week without fail – and tailored to his shifts.

Which meant that no Fridays meant getting Jo for Friday afternoons, the whole of Saturday, and returning her to her mother's on Sunday morning in time for lunch.

So it was that the afternoon after Jim's completely unsubtle hinting, McCoy found himself pulling up outside Jo's nursery school – a small, one-storey building of the type that spouted community values and catered to the apathetic but still vaguely Christian parents that fit neither into the religiously zealous nor the hippie-liberal atheism schools of thought, and, thanks to its abominable yellow roof and smugly green grass in the play area, produced reams of small children with an offensive sense of aesthetics.

McCoy thought it ironic: back east, he would have been considered odd for picking up his daughter from nursery because mothers were the caregivers, not fathers, and therefore responsible for transporting offspring to and fro. Here, he was given funny looks for his own lack of a sense of aesthetics (or at least fashion) and his complete lack of interest in socialising with the other parents (mothers) and swapping parenting tips from so-called experts. (And, probably, because Jo was called _Jo_ , and not something godawful like Chastity Dawn or Zenith Inspiron or something equally retarded.)

Plus, all their little clones were dressed in tidy jeans and sneakers and just breaking into the flowery summer dresses as April was warming up, instead of _his_ kid, who was in the old-enough-to-dress-myself- _Daddy_ stage, and therefore...

...abandoned her game the moment that he appeared at the gate and barrelled towards him without pausing to tell her teacher, a blur of lurid orange and painful yellow, hitting his knees at roughly the same speed as a car and shrieking, "Daddy, Daddy, _Daddy_!" at the top of her lungs.

The word 'Daddy' attracted her teacher's attention, though, and he waved before bending and hauling all four tonnes of _Jo_ into his arms.

"We did _writing_ ," she said, offered a loud, wet kiss on the cheek, and squeezed his neck until he had to pry her arms loose to breathe. She was getting too heavy to carry about comfortably for long, but she dug her sneakered heels into his sides and chattered a mile a minute in his ear, refusing to be put down until her teacher could offer her backpack and jacket and a sheepish smile.

"She's been _lively_ today," she said, and Jo scowled when she was dropped to the floor.

"M'not," she said, burying her head behind McCoy's knee – a habit she'd picked up when learning to walk and had never really dropped. "Readin's _borin'_!"

Despite having been born and raised entirely in San Francisco, Jo's accent could be thicker than McCoy's, and she didn't seem to have a grasp of what a 'g' actually was. Joss got wound up about it; personally, McCoy thought it was funny and she'd grow out of it given enough time.

"Depends what you're readin', darlin'," he drawled. "Put your bag on."

"But..."

"You can carry your own bag, Joanna."

" _Jo_."

"Josephine."

" _Jo_! I'm _Jo_!"

"Jocelyn."

" _JO_!" she fairly shrieked, snatching the dangling pink backpack from his fingers and hefting it on with the complete lack of grace and skill that three-year-olds ("nearly four, _nearly_!") possessed.

McCoy always parked a good two hundred metres from the nursery, for two reasons – firstly, actually being able to park, and secondly, to watch her bounce along the sidewalk ahead of him and play some reverse of the don't-step-on-the-cracks game and deliberately stomp on every crack, smudge, mark, pock, leaf and flattened piece of gum that she could find.

Jo wasn't really _obviously_ his kid, although the energy, the stubborn streak a mile wide, and the complete bloody-mindedness of her was a McCoy trait through-and-through. But she wasn't _obviously_ Jocelyn's either: she had a round face, filled with baby fat absent entirely from both of theirs, and her body proportioned more towards being square than either of theirs. She had Joss's wayward hair, but the wrong colour – Jo's was a brilliant blonde, unlike either parent, but McCoy suspected it would darken as she got older; after all, his eldest sister had been blonde as a Norwegian until the age of ten. She had Nana McCoy's big round eyes, but Nana Kerr's dark blue, and Poppa McCoy's large hands and feet, oddly betrayed by Poppa Kerr's slender forearms. She was an oddly-proportioned child, but most three-year-olds were, and McCoy took sadistic pleasure out of the fact that had least Jo's head had always been the right shape, unlike Jocelyn's eldest niece.

Keeping up with Jo was a work in progress. If she wasn't his in appearance, her temperament was cut from the same cloth. She was impatient, obstinate, quick to anger and quick to criticise, impossible to talk around once she'd made up her mind, and not bribed or blackmailed thoroughly enough into the norms of society to know when to keep her mouth shut. Jim, who saw Jo most Saturday mornings when he inevitably popped over to steal whatever staple food he'd run out of on Friday night, absolutely adored her for this toddler sense of schadenfreude and tourette's combined, and McCoy just _knew_ that he'd have to ban Jim from the house before she got any older, lest the corruption be completed.

God forbid Jim be anywhere _near_ Jo once she hit the torture of the teenage years.

"Park," she demanded, once they reached the car and she stretched up to be picked up without bothering to remove her bag. "We're goin' to the park."

"Says who?"

"Says _me_."

He shouldn't have laughed, but he did. Screw Jim's ideas of being regulars at the local bar; _this_ was his regular routine, and he wouldn't have changed that for the world.


	7. Arc One, Part Six

Given Jim's exasperation over Spock's decision, and knowing what he did of Jim's methods of persuading people to do as _he_ wished and not as _they_ wished, Spock was entirely unsurprised to arrive at _Harry's_ the following Monday and find Jim playing pool with McCoy, who committed a rather atrocious shot upon Spock's approach and made a noise rather like a dying fish.

"Whoa, Bones, didn't know you liked a man in leather or I'da dressed up for you," Jim teased, thumping Spock on the back. "Get a beer and get your ass on the table, Spock. I'm feeling lucky."

Spock shed his biking jacket – he rarely opted to walk to _Harry's_ in the spring, and tended to use his bike – over the back of the closest chair, leaving the helmet in the seat, and left to McCoy's low ' _damn_ ', though he had no idea what the man was damning.

"You could totally get those pants off him again, Bones," Jim said, his voice drifting, and Spock resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Gaila almost dropped the bottle twice, and _did_ drop his change, and Spock wondered for the hundredth time what it was about leather that got Americans into a fuss. Biking leathers were heavy and bulky; they were a far cry from the usual let-everything-hang-out attitude that Californians had to their clothes.

He did not miss McCoy's...awkward stance...when he returned to the table. Perhaps Jim was at least right in the vague interest being reciprocal.

"Came down on the bike, then?" Jim asked, failing to sink an easy ball.

"Obviously."

"Well, I haven't seen it in _ages_. Thought you were letting it rust, or..."

McCoy groaned, his temporary loss of cognitive function apparently suddenly overridden. "You're not as crazy as this idiot?"

Spock blinked. "I do not understand."

"Yeah, he is," Jim said, and chuckled. "Spock, he's asking whether you have a motorbike."

"I would have thought my attire and belongings made that obvious."

"Goddamn death traps, the lot of 'em. You're, what, twenty-five?"

"Twenty-six."

"You ride around on a goddamn motorbike, and you won't hit thirty," McCoy grumbled.

"If driven responsibly, a motorbike is..."

"Don't give me that claptrap," McCoy barked, and Jim snickered. "All it takes is one asshole not lookin' out for a bike on the roads, and _bang_ , you got road rash from your toes to your neck and your tattoos are stretched clean across the road with half your guts hangin' out!"

"Eurgh, _Bones_ ," Jim complained.

"I do not have tattoos," Spock replied calmly.

"Oh good, somethin' sensible at last," McCoy drawled. "Get a goddamn car. At least if the car crashes, you got a hope in hell of _survivin'_ it."

"Perhaps, but whoever I strike with the car does not," Spock returned flatly. "As a smaller vehicle and generally capable of lesser speeds, a motorbike does not present the same danger to others as a car. It is therefore better compared to alcohol."

"Say what?" McCoy narrowed his eyes.

"It is interesting to be lectured on the safety merits of a motorbike by a man imbibing in alcohol, which is responsible for many major – and fatal – health problems. I may be killed at thirty by being thrown from the motorbike, Leonard, but it will be a quicker death than from alcohol poisoning or cancerous growths at fifty."

McCoy spluttered, and Jim put his bottle down warily. "Guys..."

"I'll have you know I don't drink _nearly_ the amount required to..."

"Given the usual trait of the medical profession of changing their minds, some would state drinking _at all_ increases those risks," Spock returned. "In any case, you will take such risks yourself as I do in my mode of transport. I could very well walk, and be attacked on my way home."

"Okay, that's _enough_ ," Jim stepped in loudly when McCoy opened his mouth to fire something – probably a highly caustic something – back at him. "Cut it out and let's get on with the game. Spock, it's your break."

McCoy subsided, simmering. He had always been quick to flare up, and it had driven Joss mad in the last few months, but – that was different. Spock had not seemed annoyed or even particularly defensive; if anything, he had flared up in a similar fashion, parrying and arguing back like a verbal fencer doing it for the fun rather than any real purpose. McCoy argued enough to know an angry man from a merely animated one, and unless Spock's voice and body language were _completely_ off, he hadn't even been remotely _annoyed_.

In any case, it had brought an odd...animation to his blank features that McCoy wouldn't mind seeing a whole lot more of.

...or that ass in leathers as he bent over the table to break. The draining of blood from McCoy's head, combined with the alcohol, left him slightly dizzy. Goddamn, that was just about indecent. And if Spock's ass wasn't approaching indecent, the state of McCoy's pants was definitely getting there.

He spent the rest of the game hip-to-table.

* * *

Jim wasn't exactly the most respectful of other people's boundaries, sure, but there was no personal bubble between them, and McCoy wondered at it. Spock didn't strike him as the touchy-feely type, and yet he seemed the opposite of bothered by Jim's attentions – and his _hands_ , always moving and half the time touching. Not _inappropriately_ , but still...more. More than was really _normal_.

Case in point, when he returned from the bar between the fourth and fifth games to see Spock bending to take the break, and Jim's hand casually (and how he could do such a thing casually was beyond McCoy) wandering to rest on his belt, a scant inch above that ass that had been haunting McCoy's libido.

"Miss," Jim ordered, and the crack of the cue shattered the neat arrangement. "I said _miss_. God, you suck at taking orders."

Spock straightened, and equally casually, closed a hand around Jim's wrist and removed his hand to the pool table, pinning it for a moment before letting go, handing the cue over, and returning to his drink.

"Yeah, yeah," Jim rolled his eyes. "I don't have herpes, you know. Well, I probably don't."

McCoy snorted. "Then you're a lucky son of a bitch."

Jim stuck his tongue out. "You both think I'm completely irresponsible, don't you?"

"Not entirely, Jim," Spock said smoothly, and got a wary look. "You were, after all, mindful enough to think twice about attempting to seduce your housemate."

Jim snorted. "Sulu? That closet's a mile deep. Nobody who's that gay can _actually_ be straight."

"What about you?" McCoy asked.

"Bisexual, thank you very much," Jim postured, and missed his shot by a mile. "It's not a dirty word."

"Or simply _sexual_ , in your case," Spock parried, and McCoy snickered.

"Quiet, you," Jim poked Spock with the cue before handing it over. "You're already kicking my ass, you don't need to embarrass me on top of that."

"If my aim were to embarrass you, Jim, then this conversation would have taken a far seedier turn."

"Go on then," Jim challenged.

"Carol Marcus."

McCoy had no idea who Carol Marcus was or had been, but judging by the way Jim's face suddenly flushed purple and his left elbow dug into Spock's ribs sharply, he really didn't want to know.

"Point taken, and shutting up," Jim said. "Bastard," he added after a moment, and Spock placidly ignored him.

Batting Jim down yet again really hadn't helped McCoy's situation, though. If anything, it was adding points – and questions. Jim had voiced his own interest, in casual terms, and McCoy honestly couldn't tell whether or not he'd ever acted on it. He was pretty sure, from Jim's glee about his attraction, that Jim didn't have any ideas of relationships and exclusivity – but McCoy did. If he was going to get into something, then no third parties were joining in, thank you very much, and he just _could not tell_ whether that was what he'd be walking into. If he acted on this, was he always going to be looking over his shoulder for Jim, watching Kirk's every move around Spock, _waiting_ for the other shoe to drop? He couldn't – wouldn't – do it.

It didn't matter. It was all hypothetical.

* * *

It was automatic for him, knowing that Spock was driving – even if it was on a completely foolish vehicle – to keep an eye on the man's alcohol intake, and McCoy had to concede by the time Jim admitted defeat and called it a night, Spock could make a bottle _last_. He was pleasantly surprised, however, given that Jim had definitely had one too many, to see him clap Spock on the once-again leather-clad shoulder and say, "Sure you're okay to drive?"

"I am," Spock said evenly, the metallic whizz of the zipper on his jacket sounding loud in the quieting bar.

"Uh-huh," McCoy drawled. "Sober enough to get yourself killed. One patch of ice, Spock. One patch of ice."

"Unlikely, in April."

"Fog, then. Low visibility. Another drunk driver. Hell, just goin' too damn fast around a corner and _wham_ , you're smashed into the front store of some closed cafe and bleedin' out."

" _Bones_ ," Jim whined, hitting him in the shoulder.

"I run no greater risk of other poor drivers on a motorbike than I would in a car," Spock replied evenly as they stepped out into the dank air. It was wet, like a cold slap in the face, and smelled strongly of salt, car fumes, and the faint hang of lilacs from the closed florist across the street.

"Only a greater risk of gettin' _killed_ by 'em," McCoy grumbled.

"I have been utilising a motorbike for over six years, and this route is hardly a hazardous one. However, if it would set your paranoid mind at ease, Leonard, I am quite happy to inform the both of you upon my successful and safe return to my apartment, and not my introduction to a cafe window."

Jim snorted and grinned. "You do that, Spock. Text me."

"Would that meet with your anxiety-based requirements, Leonard?"

McCoy ground his teeth. "Sure. And when you _do_ come off it one day, just remember that I warned you."

"As have many," Spock returned, turning into the small parking lot belonging to the bar and almost casually swinging a long, lean leg over a monster of a bike. Hell, McCoy didn't know jack about motorbikes, but Spock's was a big'un, and it was the kind of heavy machine he could see Jim itching to take apart on his lawn. He affixed his helmet – and McCoy supposed at least he actually wore the helmet and the heavy leathers, which was something – and the bike growled like a sinister animal when he settled.

"God, it's a beauty," Jim breathed.

"Uh-huh."

Jim eyed McCoy suspiciously.

The suspension was light, and Spock turned the machine as though he were part of it, raising a hand in a brief farewell before joining the road and disappearing in a clap of thunder and a disappearing light, and McCoy grimly noted that he didn't exactly drive _slow_.

"I don't think you were appreciating the bike," Jim said.

McCoy snorted. "Just the maniac on top of it."


	8. Arc One, Part Seven

Half past nine, and it was dark inside and out. From the floor behind the apartment door, the city lights were invisible, tucked away under the window-frame and the wall until only the dead sky was visible, the cloud and smog obliterating any stars that would have been there, and the sickly yellow slip of moon long-since vanished behind the heavy rain clouds for morning.

Spock had no interest in the city lights.

Back pressed to the wall and shivering, he half-listened and half-ignored the music from the apartment below, the usual noises of a party revving up for the full night, and fought to breathe in time with the music, to get himself under control. Panic was illogical; there was nothing to panic _about_. It was mere adrenalin making his hands shake; it was a simple physiological reaction. It was not _panic_. There was nothing to panic _about_.

He did not recognise the music.

The apartment was lonely; in the silence, his heartbeat was like a kettle-drum, his lungs rasping around it like a bizarre percussion instrument. He sounded _loud_ in the silence, which was also fantasy. He was not producing a higher decibel level than normal; he was simply, through this _senseless_ response to equally ridiculous stimuli, concentrating too hard on that which was meaningless.

He fought for calm, centring himself with familiar breathing exercises, like walking the same path home every day for years. He could still remember the four hundred metre zigzag through paper houses to his elementary school in Sendai. He could remember the neat split down the alleyway between the laundrette and the temple, ripped into the concrete by an earthquake decades before his birth. He could remember, as a very small child, being fascinated by this evidence of existence before _him_ , in that childish egocentrism about the world.

He pulled on the memory, tracing the crack with his mind, and felt the tremors leech away. Eventually, his hands steadied, and he took a cleansing breath. He would need to meditate upon this again; his reactions were still lacking. Still out of proportion to the problem.

As he rose, he dropped the note that had been pushed through his door, and forgot it until the morning.

_Be round with your money soon. N._

* * *

Over the next two weeks, McCoy was forced to admit it: his _whatever_ on Spock wasn't going away.

McCoy knew himself – he fell in and out of infatuations like other people fell in love with kittens and puppies and other disgustingly cute crap. But they lasted a week, maximum. By the end of April, forced to watch Spock decimating Jim's tactics yet again and attempt once more to quell a hard-on in public, and having had that _same_ reaction for three weeks – every Monday, and two Thursdays – McCoy was forced to admit that maybe he was in just a touch deeper than he'd thought.

(He was smart enough, though, not to inform Jim of his suspicions.)

The problem was, what in the hell did he want to do about it?

Sexual attraction was easy to handle. Screw him a few times, get it out of your system, and carry on your way. Except, not only did McCoy get the impression that Spock wasn't one for your friendly one-night-stand, he also had the unpleasant foreboding that actually getting access to that ass would make things worse, not better. And worse...worse was not an option.

The fact was, he didn't _want_ to be getting into anything. The last time he'd just decided 'let's go for it' hadn't exactly worked out. He'd made enough messes, and fucked up his life enough times, by just winging it and wandering into relationships both romantic and sexual that he really should have thought twice about. He wasn't exactly looking to do it again, and certainly not on the heels of a divorce that was only just a year old. Joss might have moved on mighty quick, but he hadn't, and everything else aside, that wouldn't be fair to Spock, playing second fiddle to the ex-wife who was never around anymore.

But then, he pondered, staring in a slightly glazed fashion at the lean lines of Spock's profile as he entered the bar on the thirtieth and headed straight for his first drink, it wasn't exactly going away either.

He _could_ ignore it. He might even get away with ignoring it for a while. But if it didn't go away – he knew himself. He'd ignored Joss for months before bottling it and asking her to the dance. If he ignored it, and it didn't ease, he would end up doing something about it anyway, and simply walking into the mess later than he would have done otherwise. And if he was going to have to do something, why postpone the inevitable? He'd never been one to try that course of action anyway – he was a goddamn _doctor_.

So if he decided to act – what action? He didn't know the guy all that well, but he didn't come across at all like Jim, happy with a couple of weeks fucking on every available surface and then back to normal. Jim had made the odd noise about Spock having a similar back history to McCoy's ("...they're only not divorced because they weren't married...") But what else? The actual whole-nine-yards dating shtick that he was way too old to be starting over again? Hell, he'd not even been in a relationship with a guy before. Not a real one, just the usual teenage fumblings round the back of the school gym and under the bleachers, and a couple of one-night stands in the immediate aftermath of his divorce, just to keep the loneliness at bay. He didn't know what gays goddamn well did on dates.

And then the _big_ clincher. This might be San Francisco, but it didn't mean everyone was all holding hands and singing fucking peace songs. At best, Spock might not be gay. At worst, he might be outright homophobic. Jim was a slut, but he was a fairly discreet one, most of the time. Spock might not know about his string of men, women, and androgynous persons. Jim had hinted Spock was eyeing him up, but what the hell did Jim know? Jim thought Joss was ugly, for Christ's sake.

Back to the point, even if Spock wasn't homophobic, most straight guys felt kind of weird being hit on by another man. McCoy could understand that. And hell, he liked Spock. He didn't want to make it awkward on Monday nights, and cease their bitching sessions, but...well, it was going to happen eventually anyway, if this goddamn infatuation didn't fuck off already.

Either way: McCoy was _screwed_.

* * *

The weekend had been a bad one, and so Spock felt unnaturally tense upon his arrival at _Harry's_ on the thirtieth. He did not especially want to be here tonight, but Jim's poorly-controlled concern over his reclusiveness was always reactivated in full force by absenteeism, and so Spock had more or less dragged himself out after a long day at work and an even longer evening trying to summon the energy to go at all.

Spock knew himself well enough, however, to notice how his mood lifted somewhat upon seeing the familiar dark jacket slung over the back of a chair by the pool table, and the broad-shouldered form of Leonard McCoy leaning over the table. He paused a moment to admire the view, then opted for a stronger than usual drink in the hopes of forcing his body to relax a little.

"One of those days?" McCoy asked as he joined them, reaching to clink their bottles together and indicate the label.

"Indeed," Spock said. "It has been a tiring day."

"Somethin' a little stronger needed, huh?"

Spock inclined his head, and McCoy shrugged.

"Fair enough," he said. "Long as you ain't drivin'."

Jim glanced up briefly from his shot and opened his mouth, but subsided when Spock said, "Not tonight."

McCoy eyed him a little longer, though why was beyond Spock's powers of observation on this man, before grunting and turning back to the game to take his shot when Jim finally performed an outrageous fluff and rose, scowling.

"I should've had that," he snapped.

"I would have been surprised," Spock said dryly.

"Why?" Jim challenged.

"It would imply that your skill is improving."

"Where'in the hell are you from, Spock?" McCoy asked, flattening his chest along the top of the table. "I ain't never heard nobody talk like you."

"Bones!"

"Just askin' a question, Jimmy, don't get your panties in a twist," he drawled.

"I am from Singapore, Leonard."

McCoy whistled. "Second language is English, then?"

"Third language, in fact."

"What brought you to America?"

There was a sharp pause, before Spock said: "Various circumstances specific to the time."

Well, that was a non-answer if he'd ever heard one, and Jim didn't look too happy, so he dropped it in favour of: "Well, it's further'n Georgia."

"You are Georgian?"

McCoy missed and rose to let Jim take over. "Sure am. Born in Atlanta, raised in Dahlonega. That's north," he added helpfully. "Left for my degree and then came here. Haven't been back in – heck knows. You miss Singapore, Spock?"

"Hardly, Leonard," Spock said dryly. "I was only two years old when we returned to Japan."

"Fine – d'you miss _Japan_?" McCoy rolled his eyes. "Goddamn pedantic foreigners."

"You're from Georgia, that's practically _alien_ ," Jim scoffed, draining his bottle. "Okay, watch me sink her. Watch, guys. I _own_ this one!"

They dutifully quieted long enough to watch Jim miss the shot, then Spock said: "I do not miss Japan."

"Why not?"

"Do you miss Georgia?"

"Nah, not really," McCoy said. "Wouldn't fit in much these days. And I ain't religious enough to bother with church every damn week anyhow. I'll make my excuses when I get there."

"Amen," Jim snickered, leaning to attempt the shot again. "Okay, _now_ I got her. That last one was a warm-up."

"Jim, c'mon, this is gettin' painful."

"Fine," Jim said. "Spock. Sink it for me, and I'll buy you another beer."

Spock eyed the angle, then wordlessly reached for the pool cue, draining the rest of the bottle (McCoy's throat nearly closed up when that Adam's apple bobbed like that. _Damn_!) and clunking it down before bending over the table (double fucking damn) and sinking it effortlessly. If the man only got better the more he drank, he'd be a pool shark by the end of the evening.

"Awesome," Jim said. "And I'll get shots."

"No, Jim."

"Shots," Jim replied flatly, and sauntered off.

"I think he's decided you're getting drunk," McCoy drawled.

"I believe that you may be correct," Spock allowed.

And McCoy's brain – or mouth, or both – did their usual trick of informing him of a course of action seconds before it took place, and not giving him a chance to actually do anything about it. Which was, of course, why it had been inevitable in the first place.

"How about you come and get a drink with me sometime?"

Spock paused in setting up the next game, and stared unreadably at him over the table. Those dark eyes were shockingly intense, and McCoy could only imagine what it was like to get off with _that_ staring at you.

Pretty damn good, he figured.

"Are you asking me on a date?"

"Yeah."

 _Something_ crossed Spock's face, but God knew what it was. McCoy sure as hell didn't. And then, quite suddenly: "Very well."

"Yeah?"

"'Yeah'." And the word sounded so hilarious coming from Spock's mouth, McCoy couldn't help but snort and grin around the mouth of the bottle.

And so he walked, very unwisely, right back into a _something_ with a _someone_ , and had no idea what he was doing.


	9. Arc One, Part Eight

The problem was...

Well.

McCoy had absolutely no fucking clue what happened next. He wasn't eighteen anymore. Spock wasn't a drop-dead gorgeous redhead in a blue dress at the school dance. (Well, not the redhead in a blue dress at the school dance part, anyway.) There wasn't a manual for a man approaching thirty asking another man, also approaching thirty, on a...drinks thing together. Date. What-the-fuck-ever.

This was what happened when his mouth engaged before his brain had time to catch up. Half the time, he said something hurtful and hateful and had to handle the fallout from being a grumpy bastard. The other half, he walked himself into situations he would have been better off leaving alone.

And somehow – _somehow_ , by some God-given _miracle_ – Jim hadn't realised.

He'd been out of earshot when McCoy had asked, and neither of them had further discussed it in range of him, and hell, McCoy hadn't even realised that Spock had passed his number until he'd gotten home that Monday night to find a piece of paper slipped into his jacket pocket and a string of numbers. Spock had surprisingly messy handwriting.

On Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of his break and tiring of Boyle's mutterings about 'that bloody woman!' (some new intern McCoy had never heard of) McCoy thumbed out a brief text asking whether Spock was free Friday night (it wasn't his weekend for Jo) and spent the latter half of his shift wondering what in the hell he was actually going to suggest. He didn't dare ask any of his colleagues, or the whole hospital would know in under half an hour, and he was pretty sure Jim was banging one of the nurses in the sexual health clinic. Hell, maybe he should just let his mouth talk him out of it without any input from his brain.

He didn't have the chance; Spock called, not five minutes after the end of his shift, and by the echoing, from a bathroom.

"Where in the hell are you?" McCoy blurted out.

Spock paused. "Is that relevent?"

"Probably not."

"Regarding Friday night," Spock cut across him smoothly, "there is a reputable bar across the park behind the courthouse that offers alcohol that is not contaminated, and food which meets FSA standards."

"So – not Jim's kind of dive, then?"

"Indeed not."

"Sounds fine to me," McCoy agreed. "Say, eight?"

"Very well. I will send directions."

"Should I prepare to get a cab after?" McCoy dared, and there a brief pause.

"That depends entirely on how much you intend to imbibe – however," Spock paused again, "they do not have a parking lot, and a taxi could be hailed from the street in front of my apartment."

It was so close to being a hint, and yet far enough not to be certainty, that McCoy felt the beginnings of a buzz from it.

"I'll bear that in mind," he said, his drawl lengthening fractionally. "Eight on Friday. I'm lookin' forward to it already."

"As am I," Spock said, unexpectedly, before ringing off without so much as a goodbye.

McCoy didn't stop grinning the whole way home.

* * *

 _Soare_ was closer to Spock's apartment than _Harry's_ – a cut through three backstreets and alleys and across a main thoroughfare into the vaguely dimmed lights of the legal downtown. Surrounded by courthouses, custody suites and offices, _Soare_ thus had itself a reputation as safe, secure – and quick to sue. Much, Spock reflected with gallows humour, like his first tentative forays into bars at university, in the company of other young, impressionable, and occasionally downright stupid people.

Its proximity meant that Spock did not leave his apartment until a quarter to eight, with one last glance in the mirror in some sense of futile hope that the mirror would give him some insight into what, exactly, he was doing, before adjusting his sleeves and opening the front door.

To find an envelope taped to the knocker.

His heart rate... _jumped_.

There had been nothing upon his arrival home from work, and there was no other evidence that anyone had been here; tonight, it seemed, he had some small reprieve from that critical stare and cold tone. A small blessing, but one all the same, and now the exchange had occurred, they should not need (although that was no guarantee) to cross paths again for some time.

He breathed, and his heart rate began to drop again.

He unstuck it carefully, running his nails under the tape to loosen it and not peel away the paint, before ripping into the envelope without any of the care of removing it from the door. The handwriting was immediately familiar – that elegant, looping script with the tall _l_ s and the squat, fat _e_ s and _p_ s that he had spent the better part of four years watching weave itself across documents and postcards and old-fashioned letters that apparently some people still sent to one another.

He took another breath. _Calm_. The cheque had been anticipated; the amount was correct, and the note...the note was sharp, crisp. Spock had difficulty, sometimes, even after all these years of _life_ , at reading the tones and inflections in people's voices. He had no such difficulty with words – they were clinical, detached, almost cold.

Definitely cold. Cold words from a...a _firebrand_ , his mother would have said.

_Your half of the deposit. N._

There was so much more to be said. There had always been more to say.

Spock collected himself, taking a deep breath before folding the cheque back into the envelope and placing it on the phone table, shutting and locking his door with unnecessary force behind him, and blocking it from his mind. It was unimportant. He would ignore it, and continue with his plans, and he would process the cheque tomorrow, and that would be all. It was done; _they_ were done.

Tonight was not the night for familiar handwriting.

* * *

McCoy was just a little bit dizzy.

He wasn't totally sure of the source of it. The cook had been liberal with the amount of red wine in the sauce of his meal, and the bartender's recommended cocktail, while not tasting a bit like the promised mint julep, was stronger than your average British ale. The music, dulled but creeping in from a party in a back room, was of the obnoxious thumping type that got the alcohol in your system in time with it and dragged your heartbeat along for the ride. And then – damn, but if Spock had looked hot in his leathers, he looked a lot better now, the night balmy enough to allow for a tight shirt and some definitely tighter-than-strictly-necessary slacks. McCoy's blood was thumping, alright, but nowhere near his _head_.

And then there was the arguing.

McCoy was the youngest of four kids, and by a long way. He'd grown up in a world where shouting your mouth off, loudly and viciously and _making_ someone listen to you, was the only way to get anything at all. And so he was an argumentative son-of-a-bitch; he was just _wired_ to poke and prod and ruffle feathers. It earned him more enemies than friends, and more compliant patients than stubborn ones, and while Jocelyn had found it endearing and even funny for a while, she hadn't really liked it toward the end, and had outright told him that if he didn't change his stubborn, mule-headed ways, he'd never find someone willing to put up with it.

Only Spock really, really didn't seem to care.

McCoy had found himself picking at the vegetarianism, at the bike (again), at the music in the next room, at the obnoxiously gay bartender (twice), at the absent Jim (of course) and at the entire state of California (literally) for allowing on the roads such suicidal maniacs as the one that had tried to rear-end him the day before.

And Spock, far from politely nodding, tolerating it, or diverting the conversation, had given as good as he'd gotten.

By the time they had finished eating, McCoy knew six new phrases for 'you have no idea what you're talking about, so shut up', two for 'you're an idiot' and three for 'I don't know why we're arguing this, but you're not winning.' He had learned that Spock's way of saying ' _really_?' or 'are you even listening to yourself?' was not rasped in a shrill voice, but to merely raise an eyebrow and use about fifty words to call him a fuckwit. And hell, perhaps he should have gotten mad about that, but – fuck, it was more than a little hot.

McCoy was abrasive. He knew himself well enough to know that. He _knew_ that he liked the clash and parry of verbal sparring, as much as he abhorred actual physical fighting between people most of the time. It was – it was a challenge. It was an outright challenge to prove yourself to the other, like a game of pulling pigtails to impress the little girls, parrying back and forth and hoping they would understand – and to find someone that would hold the sword firm and not give way to his attack...

Perhaps it was bad of him – his momma had told him off enough times for pullin' girls' pigtails by picking on 'em – but more of him had definitely decided that that cool expression and dry response was...

Well, no wonder he was goddamn dizzy.

He couldn't remember what they talked about – perhaps he never would – but last orders rang out before he really noticed, and he had a fair amount of alcohol in his system, and Spock had some _twisted_ utilitarianism system of ethics goin' down that invited freakin' _communism_ into the damn country under a Chinese flag, but everything in him was _humming_ with contentment, and he'd never had a first date where he'd just _argued_ before.

"You're just about as argumentative as I am," McCoy accused, as Spock gathered his coat.

Spock paused, and tilted his head. "Perhaps, albeit in a different manner."

"What manner's that, then?"

Spock tilted his head. "I am correct."

McCoy was laughing when he followed Spock out of the bar into a heavy, smog-dank night. The man's ability to shoot Jim down wasn't a localised thing, then, and thank Christ – it would make him difficult. It would make him a _challenge_ , and the hardheaded southerner in McCoy couldn't help but like a challenge, especially one so blatantly laid out for him.

The fine ass didn't hurt either.

The night was rank, the air wet and stinking of exhaust fumes and sweat, the warm of spring leaching into the stench of winter in an unpleasant combination. Cities swam in their own filth, and McCoy wrinkled his nose against the smell as they stepped from the lights of the dying into the dim streets, heading back the way they – or at least Spock – had come hours earlier. In the lonely darkness of the narrowing road into which Spock led them, McCoy's arm – more or less of its own volition – ghosted up to wrap his fingers around the jut of the furthest hip, and rest there.

"I believe you are optimistic, Leonard."

"Optimism never hurt nobody."

"Anybody."

"Whatever," he drawled. "So tell me. If universal healthcare's such a damn good idea, why doesn't everybody have it?"

"An extremely illogical argument to use..."

Spock's voice – a low thrum that didn't so much as echo despite the lonely backstreets that swallowed them – was more effective at keeping McCoy's attention than his actual reply, and McCoy's libido opted to use the rest of his brain to construct fantasies of what that deep, calm voice sounded like when it wasn't so damn calm, when he was all riled up and shaken out of this cool, controlled comfort zone of his. And McCoy could do that – oh _hell_ , could he do that...

"This is my building," Spock interrupted the thoughts seamlessly, pausing outside the entrance and shifting just enough to turn to face him. The orange light from the streetlamps looked sickly on his white skin, but the shadows of his eyes were as intense and unreadable as they had been in _Harry's_ that Monday night, and McCoy wanted to prise them back and see what was below.

"I'll hail a cab from the main road," he said genially. He knew a boundary when he saw it, and pushing too fast never got anyone anywhere. "Did I fake being a nice guy long enough to get a kiss?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. "You are a southerner."

"Georgian."

"I believed it was customary to wait, for southern courtships."

McCoy snorted. "Sure, but that's for men and _women_."

"In which case," Spock leaned in to whisper into McCoy's ear. His breath was hot; the leather of his jacket was cool under McCoy's fingers, "a girl should not kiss on the first date, Leonard."

He moved like a goddamn _cat_ – the kiss that landed on McCoy's cheek was sharp and punctual, and then the slip of a man had gone, the door to the building clanking shut and leaving McCoy standing alone on the sidewalk, hands grasping for that blur of leather that had been swept away.

He laughed.

"Slippery son of a goddamn bitch," he drawled, grinning, and turned away.


	10. Arc One, Part Nine

Jim's motorbike had a particularly throaty grumble to its engine, deep and gargling, and so Spock was prepared for the thump on the door that was probably Jim kicking it, as opposed to knocking, that Saturday morning.

He was not prepared for the grin.

"So, did you know that Janice does waitressing on the sly in _Soare_?" Jim asked. "Mm, me neither, but guess what a little blonde bird with a great ass told _me_."

Spock was not a particularly vindictive man, and rarely experienced the urge to strangle a person. Today, however, seemed to be an exception; as usual, his exceptions revolved around Jim.

"Apparently, you were there with some dashingly handsome scruffy guy with a, quote, _charming_ , end quote, southern accent. Now who could that have been?"

"I cannot imagine," Spock said dryly. "Are we going, or are we to spend today in my apartment speculating on who Janice Rand may or may not have seen?"

Jim snorted. "Alright, let's go. So. You and Bones, huh?"

"Perhaps," Spock said, collecting his bag and helmet and locking the door behind him.

"Perhaps? Did you go on a date or didn't you?"

Spock suppressed a sigh. "We went for a meal in _Soare_ , yes."

"Which is a date."

"Not necessarily."

"Did you kiss?"

"No."

"But did you _want_ to kiss him?" Jim jumped in, almost before the negation had left Spock's lips.

"I am not going to answer that," Spock said loftily, leading the way down the stairs.

"Which is a yes," Jim crowed. "You sneaky bastard. So you took my advice, huh?"

"If it will deflate your ego, perhaps I should point out that it was Leonard who proposed the meeting."

"A proposal already, isn't that a bit quick?"

Spock briefly wondered, as they stepped out of the shadow of the building and headed to the lock-up, whether if he abandoned Jim's body in the unit belonging to 14A, it would ever be discovered.

Probably not.

"So when are you going out on a not-date again?"

"Jim, I am strikingly reminded of being in high school again."

"Yeah, well, I never get gossip on you," Jim pointed out, reasonably enough. "Especially not your sex life. Because, you know, it's dead."

Spock racked up the garage door and didn't answer.

"Seriously, though. Are you dating him?"

Spock paused, chewing on the inside of his lip. "We are...seeing what happens."

Jim nodded. Something odd twisted in his face, then he grinned and clapped Spock's shoulder. "Alright, enough mushy shit. Let's hit the road."

* * *

Spock's first conversation with Jim that had been anything more than exchanged greetings in the elevators at work had been about his bike. Even then, Spock had ridden his bike to work, although his early arrivals and late departures meant that Jim hadn't known it was his for some time. And the moment that Spock had confirmed it was indeed his, a friendship had been hastily born.

Over the intervening three years since that initial discussion on their respective machines (and several machines later, in Jim's case) it had become habit, once a month, to get together at the weekend and simply...ride. The adrenalin from controlling such a powerful machine at such speeds was not anathema to Spock at all, and the feeling of freedom and _escape_ had been one that he had craved like a teenager breaking out for the first time, ever since his first experience on a motorbike of any description. It was quite divorced from his childhood experiences and that sterile upbringing; it was something that would have been quite disapproved of, and perhaps something that reached for the man he could have been, if not for that sterility. It was, in a way, a quiet defiance of the past and the present, and the future. In the aftermath of his breakup, that had coupled with the urge to get away for a while and forget, even for a moment, the contents (or lack thereof) of his life.

And riding, even done in groups, was a solitary activity. They could not speak easily when on the move, and they had fallen into a rhythm of simply following each other. Sometimes, Jim led; sometimes, Spock. On one memorable occasion, with Jim suffering the after-effects of Carol Marcus and Spock freshly alone, they had hit Oregon before realising their error, and had had to find a motel in which to spend the night. Despite taking all weekend for a planned couple of hours, it had made the both of them less dissatisfied with their respective positions.

And Spock needed a little time on the move to assimilate his new situation, and the developing potential situation with Leonard which he had not intended, but had found himself in regardless. It was remarkable how he managed to do so he had never in his life set out to _be_ in a relationship. Counting Leonard, it had now happened four times; unlike the last three instances, Spock was little older and a little wiser or warier, if one were to ask Jim and any residual naïveté had been lost. He knew, too well, what happened when such attempts failed; he knew the price of complacency, and the price of trust, and the price of investing oneself into relationships, and the equally hostile price of not investing enough, and what happened when such a delicate balance could not be struck, and the attempt failed. And he knew what it was not to see such failure coming.

And yet he knew, even as the city began to fall away and Jim kicked into the lead, turning north for the coast roads and the silence, that such knowledge would not save him.

* * *

"Seriously, though," Jim said when they stopped at a roadside diner just outside of Clearlake, taking up the conversation as though it had never been paused. "Are you seeing Bones?"

"Why do you call him 'Bones'?"

"Just about the first thing he ever said to me," Jim grinned. " _Nothin' left but mah bones_ ," he mocked in a grossly exaggerated drawl that sounded more like a terminally-ill Texan than a misplaced Georgian. "Stop avoiding the question. Are you seeing him?"

"Currently, no."

"I said stop it," Jim leaned over to smack him on the arm. "Are you?"

"It is rather early to tell."

"You went on a date. Sounds like seeing him to me."

"I was unaware that you were seeing Miss Lester."

"Point taken," Jim grimaced. "Except, y'know, Bones isn't a psycho probably and you're not as much of a dumbass as me."

"My point is made, Jim. One date does not constitute dating."

"Are you going to see her again?" Jim asked as the diner door swung shut behind them, effortlessly switching gender pronoun. They had learned their lesson on too-casual discussion of such things away from the busy metropolitan areas of San Francisco itself.

"We have not made plans."

"That doesn't mean you're not going to."

"It does not mean that we are."

"But," Jim said, "you are. Aren't you? Or you'd like to."

Spock paused. "...Yes."

"Knew it," Jim said, and grinned at the approaching waitress. "Here comes beauty, grace and divinity in one flawless package."

"Whaddaya want?"

"Double bacon cheeseburger and fries usual, Spock? Awesome your Firehouse wrap, and a couple of tall Pepsis."

"We only got Coke."

"Whatever, s'all good," Jim waved her away and resumed his line of questioning with the flawless annoyance that he must have been born with. Developmental conditioning wasn't _that_ strong. "Don't get me wrong, man, I'm stoked, but you were pretty adamant you weren't going to go for it."

"I was not."

"What changed?"

Spock paused, eyes sliding sideways to watch the breeze hum through the breaks of flowers on the bank by the parking lot. "I am unsure. She asked, and I found myself...agreeing, without quite meaning to do so."

A line appeared between Jim's thick brows. "But you do like her, right?"

"I believe so, yes."

"Are you sure? Because..."

"Jim," Spock interrupted, "I am not a stranger to this."

"Sure," Jim grumbled. "Not that _I_ know that. How many girls have you had, anyway?"

"Less than you, more than none."

"Smartass," Jim kicked his shin under the table; Spock didn't even flinch. "I _mean_ , do you like her enough to keep going out with her, or are you just doing it because you're lonely?"

Spock's face tightened.

"Oh shut up," Jim rolled his eyes. "Don't give me the whole independent-and-proud bullshit. _Are_ you?"

"I am not going to dignify that with an answer."

"Right, sure," Jim grumbled, barely offering the waitress a glance as she slammed down their drinks. "Are you sure just...wandering into this is a good idea? I mean, you always overthink shit anyway, but maybe...after..."

"Jim."

Jim's face twisted, and he shook his head. "Alright. Alright, fine. Just...y'know. I'm here if you need me."

"I am aware, Jim."

Jim's face softened a fraction before he suddenly grinned, the expression lighting up his face in a way that was almost demonic, and said"Get as much sex out of it as possible."

Spock kicked him. _Hard_.


	11. Arc One, Part Ten

The following Monday was a particularly warm one, and McCoy should not have been so surprised as he was to see Spock walk into _Harry's_ that evening wearing nothing but slimline jeans that hugged that ridiculously perfect ass, and a black t-shirt that clung to him like a second skin.

" _Someone_ 's on the pull," Jim drawled lowly over the top of his bottle, and McCoy rolled his eyes as Spock approached.

"Do you _ever_ keep out of other people's lives?" he asked.

"Nope," Jim said, punching him in the shoulder. "Why didn't you say you'd gone on a date?"

McCoy blinked, and cast a look between Jim and Spock, as the latter's boots hit the damp stickiness of the gaming area.

"Janice saw you," Jim said, nodding at the bar, even though the aforementioned Janice didn't work Mondays. "And you didn't tell _me_. I'm offended, Bones, I really am."

"Oh, shut up," McCoy felt his face heating up, and Jim crowed.

" _Blushing_!"

"What the hell are you, thirteen?" McCoy growled.

"His attention span _is_ somewhat comparable to a thirteen-year-old," Spock said placidly, taking the cue from Jim's hand and almost casually sinking a stray ball, ignoring the indignant squawk Jim offered as a reply. "He was, however, rather insistent upon details of Thursday evening."

"Which you didn't give me, so – _Bones_..."

"No."

"Aw, c'mon," Jim smirked. "Did you kiss him?"

"Jim, shut your mouth."

"Man, you're both boring," Jim complained. "I bet you're fucking with me, and you actually screwed on the back of Spock's bike. Am I right?"

"No."

"The hell, Jim? How is that even possible?"

"Put the stand down?"

"You have given this a great deal of thought..." Spock said slowly.

"Yeah, well, you in leathers on that bike, you can't blame me," Jim shrugged. "But did you? Fuck, that's – oh, shit, hang on..."

Jim's cell phone, and suddenly McCoy's best friend even if it was an inanimate object, started blaring apparently random song lyrics (something about a woman on fire, God only knew) and he almost bounced towards the exit, fishing for it frantically with one hand. Ah, the joys of being self-employed.

"So I didn't scare you off last week?"

Spock cocked his head, pausing mid-shot. "I do not understand."

"I mean," McCoy placed his bottle on the felt and leaned over, bracing his weight on his hands, "are you _amenable_ to going out with me again?"

Spock returned his gaze to the table and took the shot. "I am." The ball rattled into the corner pocket and sank with a heavy clunk. "Do you have a particular destination in mind?"

"Sorta," McCoy said. "You free on Saturday?"

"At what hour?"

"All day."

Spock glanced up again – surprise or inrigue or both, McCoy suspected. "I...should be, yes."

"So say I swing by at ten, eleven, pick you up and we'll take the day outta the city for a while."

"Am I permitted further detail?" Spock asked, his eyes suddenly _watching_. They were _watching_ , with some dark, unreadable _intensity_ , and McCoy could almost feel his own response, the deliberate relaxation of his stance, the _smirk_ that blossomed on his own face – the response, the return, _the retaliation_.

"Nope," he said breezily, taking a long pull from his bottle and straightening to do so.

He did not fail to notice the way Spock eye's tracked his throat.

* * *

And so, Spock found himself in a...situation. For the rest of April, his reactions – not to mention Jim's – were...confusing.

It was not the first time that Spock had apparently fallen into a relationship. It was not the first time he had been drawn into one without especially wanting to be in a relationship in the general sense at all. McCoy was not even the first man to take an interest, nor the first man in whom Spock had found himself interested.

But there was something...different this time.

He could not quite place it. Perhaps it was the spark and fire between their interactions – the baiting, the arguing, the verbal fencing matches – or the sheer physicality of the man in question – and McCoy was nothing but male, in the hard lines of his physique and the scruff and blur of hair too stark to be feminine – or perhaps both, or neither. The way McCoy looked at _him_ was likely to be a component; he tended to drag his gaze slowly, lingering, and smile almost to himself at times, following some private internal thought process.

This was not like before.

Something had changed.

* * *

Their second date, McCoy had taken Spock out to the scrublands of his favourite hiking trails, and they had spent a lazy day under a slowly burning California sun. McCoy paid for it with an outbreak of freckles, though Spock stayed icy-white as ever, and the sight of Spock in blue jeans was enough to counteract the irritation at the spreading t-shirt suntan. McCoy had been surprised at its success – Spock, it seemed, was a bit of a nature geek (which explained the combination of vegetarianism and being Jim Kirk's ass-kicker, he supposed) – and they had gotten lunch at an out of the way diner and talked, of all things, about philosophy. Religious philosophy, specifically. Spock claimed to be Buddhist, though judging by the fact that McCoy _knew_ he drank alcohol and had a weird relationship with his bike, he was just about as Buddhist as McCoy was still Christian.

But the date-like quality was once again betrayed by the tricky slip of Spock out of McCoy's fingers at the end; the man was worse than a cat. McCoy had just about managed to hold onto his hand for the car ride home, and then he was gone again as soon as he'd pulled up in front of the building.

So when the third date rolled around, at the end of month, McCoy...wasn't entirely sure what to think.

McCoy hadn't dated since Jocelyn, over ten years ago, and didn't have the faintest clue what the traditions were in California anyway, never mind what Spock held to be typical of dating. But back home – way back, he supposed, in the nineties – there had been this thing about the third date. It was the one where you decided whether to carry on with whatever it was you were startin' up, or to part ways before anyone got hurt.

Or as McCoy's eldest sister had put it one evening while preparing for her own third date with the man now McCoy's brother-in-law, "Tonight, he'll either kiss me, or give me the let's-be-friends talk."

McCoy still wasn't entirely convinced old traditional courting practices did or should apply to gays – after all, he wasn't courting a woman, with a woman's sensibilities; he was dating _Spock_ , with, he suspected, no sensibilities whatsoever – but it was something to aim for anyway.

And more than that – he suspected Spock was aware of the significance. Because he had yet to kiss him.

He wasn't exactly jumpy about physical contact – McCoy had even successfully copped a feel or two in there somewhere – and he had kissed McCoy's cheek or held his hand of his own volition. He had even, on the hike, permitted McCoy's hand in his back pocket for a good quarter-mile, and McCoy had had a _wife_ with far stricter rules on personal space than _that_. He had not, however, actually kissed him, or attempted to, and McCoy suspected that he was playing hard to get. Which just made the son-of-a-bitch even hotter...which was probably why he was doing it.

McCoy _had_ to stop seeing smart people. They were too much trouble.

But the anticipation – hell, it worked. McCoy had every intention of wringing a kiss out of the man (and more, if possible, because that ass was sexually frustrating enough without having it accessible-but-off-limits-thanks-to-social-rules as well. He was buzzing before even meeting Spock outside the restaurant, and couldn't remember when they left what he'd eaten or what they'd talked about (although, judging by his adrenalin-high and good feeling, they'd argued again) or even where they were going.

The park between the restaurant and Spock's apartment block was quiet, empty and dimly-lit, and when he slid his arm around Spock's hip, there was a miniscule hint of Spock leaning into the touch. So as they broke onto the street and towards the door of doom that had proved to be his undoing on the previous two occasions, McCoy tightened his hand and drew Spock into the alley that ran between the apartment block and its neighbour – a narrow, dark expanse out of sight of all but the nosiest neighbours and pedestrians.

"So," he said, pushing Spock up against the wall and settling there, groin-to-groin without pressing. "Third date."

"It is," Spock said blandly, settling his hands on McCoy's shoulders loosely. His expression was calm and unreadable, but McCoy had enough light to see the dilated pupils burning out his eyes.

"So, back when I used to date, there was this tradition round our way."

"A temporary and singularly located instance does not imply tradition."

"It was, so shut it," McCoy returned easily. "On the third date, y'either kissed 'em, or gave them the 'let's be friends' talk."

Spock cocked his head. "The...talk?"

"You broke it off."

"Ah," Spock's hands slid around to McCoy's shoulder blades.

"Now I can't help but notice that you ain't kissed me yet," McCoy drawled.

Spock frowned – minutely, but he did – and leaned to press a dry kiss to McCoy's cheek, lips just barely rasping the stubble. "What is this, if not a kiss?" he asked, inches from McCoy's ear, before settling back against the wall, still pinned by McCoy's lower body and hands, expectantly.

"That was the kinda kiss I'd give my momma," McCoy said flatly. "Not," he smirked, "the kind of kiss I'd give, say, a guy pinnin' me to a brick wall in an alley who'd I like to keep on seein'."

There was a beat – perhaps four of McCoy's accelerated heartbeats – in which Spock simply stared at him, before those hands had gone from his shoulders to the back of his head, fingers winding into his hair, and his mouth – Asahi beer and spearmint – was sealed over McCoy's. He moulded himself to it, his upper body curving to slot into the lines of the doctor's, the first flicker of his tongue brief and fleeting before it returned, as though he were trying to reach beyond himself and take up _residence_. He was warm, his ribs and hips solid bone and shifting muscle under McCoy's kneading hands, and his teeth sharp where they caught at McCoy's lower lip to pull him back toward the wall with him, fingers clutching in his hair and _demanding_ his move to wherever Spock wanted to go. And oh _hell_ , would he go, would he ever go!

Spock was...a lot more responsive than McCoy had expected. His tongue moved in little darts and jabs, his head following the action like he was trying to find some secret in McCoy's mouth, or at least draw a mental map of his dental work. His hands didn't seem capable of staying still, wandering through his hair at random, tugging at clumps here and there, raking the nails behind his ears and into the hollows underneath, rubbing the pads along his jawline and back around to begin all over again at the nape of his neck. And when McCoy pressed closer, trying to get a decent impression of the body behind those jeans, Spock's left foot slid flat up the wall, bracketing McCoy's hip with his thigh. God _damn_.

A siren exploded into life a block away, and McCoy jerked away in startled, momentary fright. Spock's eyes were holes in his face, swallowed by the black of his pupils, and his mouth looked swollen.

 _Fuck_ , but he was hot.

"So, uh," McCoy croaked, shivering when ghostly fingers trailed down the back of his neck to his shoulders again. If they carried this on, they'd be fucking before he knew what hit him. "See you Monday?"

Spock blinked, looking somewhat dazed, and his fingers toyed with McCoy's collar.

"At _Harry's_."

"Yeah."

Spock blinked again, then peeled the collar aside and –

" _Yowch_ ," McCoy hissed through the lust as his teeth sank in and he sucked hard. He felt somewhat light-headed, and it was nothing to do with the damn arterial compression. "Holy Christ Almighty, if you get any less zen you'll explode."

"I am not concerned," Spock murmured into his skin, then let go – fully go, pushing him back slightly and regaining his footing. "I will see you on Monday."

And then he was gone, and McCoy had the worst case of wood in a long, _long_ time.

 


	12. Arc One, Part Eleven

_Arc One, Part Eleven_ **  
**

"So," Jim said, dealing the cards. "You and Bones."

Spock said nothing.

"Still going out?" Jim poked. "I haven't heard anything for a while."

"For two days, Jim."

"Long enough," Jim said tartly. "So. You going out next week too?"

"Perhaps."

Jim paused. "Perhaps?"

"I cannot predict the future," Spock said placidly, taking his cards and examining the hand.

Jim didn't touch his. "But, do you _intend_ to?"

"Yes."

Jim nodded. "Uh-huh. So, you're going for it?"

"Define 'it'."

"Oh shut it," Jim leaned across the space – Spock hid his cards – and prodded him in the arm with one finger. "You ready to admit you like him yet?"

"I did not deny such."

"You ready to admit you want a relationship with him?"

"I am still not entirely convinced."

"Yeah, but you're coming around to it."

There was another pause, and Jim's gaze was _shrewd_.

"Perhaps," Spock allowed.

Jim's smile threatened to swallow his face. "For the record – you should."

"As you have informed me, Jim."

"I mean it," Jim said confidently. "It'll be good for both of you. Don't give me that look, I _know_ these things. It'll be _great_ for you."

"Jim, are we playing or probing into my private life?"

"None of your life is private from me, it's forbidden," Jim said dismissively. "Have you fucked him yet?"

" _Jim_."

"Oh come on," Jim said. "It's not like there's any virgins in this room!"

"That does not mean..."

" _Have_ you?"

"It is absolutely none of your business."

"I'm betting no," Jim said thoughtfully. "I mean, Bones is hella hot and all, but you're like, made of freakin' _stone_. Have you at least kissed him? Properly, tried-to-eat-his-tongue kissed him?"

"Jim."

"You _have_!" Jim crowed. "You totally have! Aw, man, _finally_. Just for the record, Bones is a real man and everything. He goes mad if he can't get a good fuck every now and then. And he was married to a redhead, so _oh boy_ did he get it. Gingers are..."

"Jim, we either play and you _cease_ discussing this topic, or you will leave."

"Pft, you'd never kick me out."

"Watch me."

"Ooh, a challenge," Jim smirked.

"A promise. And furthermore, I am aware of the sexual habits of at least one redhead, though I rather doubt hair colour is a factor."

"Huh, yeah," Jim nodded. "I guess you're right. _But_. It totally is. Gingers are soulless, so they fuck like _machines_. I bet all your others – darkies, right? – they all fucked the same."

Spock was not blushing. The heat in his face was nothing to do with Jim's conversation.

"They did not."

"Uh-huh, sure. Ever fucked a blond?" Jim waggled his eyebrows. "I could show you different."

"I am sure you could. And I am equally sure that I would require extensive therapy afterwards," Spock replied dryly.

"You wound me," Jim deadpanned.

"If you pursue this topic, then I will be sorely tempted."

"Stop trying to distract me with your sexy-talk," Jim said mock-sternly. "So, you've sucked his tongue out of his skull, but not fucked him. Are you playing hard to get? Because _damn_ , no wonder he keeps coming back around if he hasn't gotten in your pants yet."

"Does this explain _your_ presence?" Spock asked pointedly.

"Sure, why not," Jim shrugged. "But _damn_ , that's cruel, Spock. Leading a guy around by the dick."

"His suspectibility is hardly my fault."

Jim snickered. "I guess not. But – just," his tone changed, "careful, okay? Be careful. I don't wanna see either of you get hurt."

"Jim, at times, you are quite paranoid about the wellbeing of those around you."

"Yeah, well, I lost a lot of people because they were careless," Jim shrugged. "I don't wanna lose either of you too."

Spock eyed him sharply for a long moment. For all his pushing upon Spock to be more open, Jim was hardly transcribed into Japanese and printed out for easy reading. His concern for those close to him was both warming and worrying, and Spock _wondered_ , sometimes.

"I am never careless, Jim."

"I dunno, your last..."

"That was not careless. Merely...unexpected."

"Uh-huh," Jim said sceptically. "Just. Whatever this is, with Bones? Be _careful_."

And Spock _wondered_.

* * *

Jo's nursery had had some teacher training day – or idle day off, he didn't know – so Friday afternoon saw McCoy driving over to Joss's little white house to pick her up, parking on the other side of the park and eyeing the newly-flourishing flowers along the 'woods' (treeline) with scepticism at their rampant, obnoxious denial of the bland, overcast sky. It was early May; in just over a week, Jo would turn four.

She was waiting; the kitchen blind shuddered when he left the north gate of the park, the door opened as he was halfway up the little street, and she was bouncing from yellow sneaker to green sneaker (what the _hell_ , Joss?) in the doorway by the time he reached the gate.

She'd been trained well, but she was still only three; the moment he latched the gate behind him, she launched, and he caught all thirty-five pounds of her halfway up the path, and nearly blew an eardrum from the shrieking.

"No, no, no, no!" she chanted when he tried to set her down again, and clung obstinately until he straightened up and carried her back to the door to take her bag from Joss, who rolled her eyes.

"It's been Daddy this, and Daddy that, and when's Daddy gonna get here?" she grumbled. "I think nursery teachers should get paid more."

For handling Jo eight hours a day, anyone deserved the President's wage, and McCoy chuckled. "You been trouble, kiddo?"

"Nuh- _uh_ ," Jo pouted, burying her head in his shoulder. "Uncle Jack's _lyin'_!"

Joss sighed. "He told her off for shouting at the TV."

"I wasn't!"

She _was_. She did it to the radio in the car, too, and while McCoy wasn't exactly buddies with his ex-brother-in-law, he could sympathise with the torment of Jo shrieking at the morning cartoons when you had a hangover.

"Daddy, I wanna play in th' jungle," Jo was whining, tugging on his sleeve, and he swung her down and hefted her bag over his shoulder.

"Alright, kiddo, but first you gotta help me find the car. It's the other side of the woods, and it ain't safe to walk through the woods by myself."

God preserve the era of her being young enough to take everything he said at face value; she beamed, clutched his hand in her sweaty little mitt, and hauled him toward the gate with surprising strength.

"Look after Daddy!" Joss called, and Jo completely ignored her in favour of dragging McCoy down the street at an uncomfortable pace and angle, given that she had only just passed three feet in height.

Ah, fatherhood.

There was a plus side to her day off – much as Jo (and McCoy) despaired of her Uncle Jack, he was always available to toss a ball with her in the yard (being an unemployed hobo and therefore bullied into being free childcare for his sister) and so Jo was more measured than usual. That is, she only chased the ducks at the pond four times instead of eight, and didn't insist that they walk through the woods _twice_ "just to make sure, Daddy!" (Make sure of _what_ , McCoy didn't have a clue.) She _did_ insist on a packet of sweets from the newsagents (she'd be at _least_ six before McCoy told her that grain bars weren't sweets) but accepted being strapped into her seat with only one sulky whine, and tangled her sticky fingers in his hair once the ordeal was over to give him an equally sticky kiss.

"For bein' Daddy," she said, as if it was completely self-explanatory.

"Thank you, darlin'," he chuckled, ruffling her hair. He'd pay good money to watch Spock have to endure one of her kisses.

She was definitely tired, quieting enough for the car journey to point out random things ("Daddy, why's there so many fat ladies?") and whine for the radio (which wasn't happening. He _liked_ being able to hear!) every thirty seconds or so. She perked up a little when they passed the hospital, waving at people through the window happily, and squealed in delight when they turned into the street, and Jim unfolded himself from the interior of the hood of a car that had been through both world wars and a couple of baseball matches.

"Jim!" she shrieked, bouncing in her seat, and though Jim couldn't possibly have heard her, he grinned and starting wiping his hands off on a rag as McCoy got out of the car.

"Babysitting duty?" he called.

"Yep," McCoy hollered, swinging open the door and beginning the arduous task of unbuckling her when she was already squirming to be let out. Jo had taken one look at Jim, with his messy clothes and his stash of colouring pens, and had fallen utterly in love with him. Which was pretty weird for Jo, who had inherited all of her Georgian xenophobia with regards to just about everyone else.

"Jim, Jim, Jim!" she called. "Daddy, make Jim c'mere."

"He'll come over in a minute, honey."

She wriggled to be set down, and he almost dropped her to the driveway, snickering at her enthusiasm. She only liked Jim because he could draw her favourite cartoon characters, and usually on _her_ rather than the paper. And he apparently was a good rocket ship.

She bounced on her mismatched sneakers once, then launched herself towards Jim.

" _NO_!" McCoy roared.

Divorce notwithstanding, Jo was fine-tuned to her father's voice, and stopped dead probably before she really registered the word, rubber-cased toes peeking over the curb and fidgeting, _itching_ to run across the street and bestow one of her sticky kisses on Jim.

"Dadd _yyyy_ ," she whined, stuffing three fingers in her mouth in acute, three-year-old distress at not being able to give Jim his pre-destined cuddle on time. The noise – or the pitch – broke Jim's supposed hard-guy image, and he outright _crooned_ , sweeping across the road to gather her up and toss her in the air above his head like he'd done the very first time they met.

"Good girl," Jim gave her an eskimo kiss and turned her over to hold her bridal-style – although more like a sack of potatoes than a fairytale princess. "Where you want this then, Bones?"

"Couch," McCoy said, slamming the trunk and going to unlock the door. "Or the trash can, I'm not bothered."

" _Noooo_ ," Jo whined, then squealed when Jim proceeded to tickle her thoroughly. He was surprisingly good with kids, given that he was a twenty-something drifter with no life plan except 'fuck every woman, man and vaguely humanoid creature in the state.' Mind you, he'd better be good with kids. McCoy could practically _predict_ the child support case coming Jim's way.

Jim took Jo into the living room and, by the sounds of it, literally dropped her on the couch, once McCoy unlocked the door. To the soundtrack of his daughter shrieking and probably hitting Jim with a cushion, McCoy balanced her overstuffed bag on the stairs and locked the front door. He didn't have a fence or a garden gate, and he didn't quite trust her not to dash off into the road.

When he followed them into the living room, Jo was standing on the couch, wielding a cushion like a pro, and Jim was cowering behind the armchair.

" _Boooones_ ," he wailed dramatically. "Save me!"

Sometimes it was like having _two_ kids – and he wouldn't have changed that for the world.


	13. Arc One, Part Twelve

_Harry's_ was quieter at six.

McCoy had gotten off shift early – apparently, the whole state population had simultaneously sprouted brain cells and stopped injuring themselves for a while – and had texted Spock to come out to _Harry's_ early and get in a meal and a drink without Jim to prod and poke at their 'fling' (or whatever he was calling it _now_ ).

In any case, McCoy felt that he owed an explanation.

Spock was one of those men, he had already worked out, that paid attention to literally everything you said and did, and therefore picked up a lot more than you gave him credit for. And as McCoy didn't know what Jim had already given Spock to work with, he couldn't be sure whether Spock knew the reason for his disappearance every other weekend.

And McCoy wasn't exactly practiced with the art of dating anymore, but he knew _that_ much: people oughta know, and pretty sharpish, when there were skeletons in the closet and kiddies every other weekend.

He told him, however, very gracelessly.

"Sorry about not being around this weekend," he blurted out in the middle of dinner, smoothly interrupting whatever Spock had been saying. "It was my custody weekend."

Spock paused, and tilted his head. "Your...?"

"I get my daughter every other weekend."

"Your daughter."

Ye-eah, Jim definitely hadn't filled Spock in on this part, and McCoy squirmed. Quite literally. Why in the hell did Spock have to be so unreadable?

"Here," he fumbled with his wallet and extracted the pictures he carried everywhere. One was fairly recent – Jo dressed as a chubby, three-year-old angel in her nursery nativity, with obscenely large paper wings, hands slapped together in a clumsy prayer and beaming with inappropriate glee for an angel of the Lord. The other was older – McCoy with a fat, yellow-robed bundle of six-month-old baby, bald as boiled egg and nowhere near as resilient, propped up on his shoulder and staring at her grinning father with four fingers stuffed in her mouth, unsure of what to make of this ludicrous man claiming responsibility over her tiny person.

"I believe I am supposed to make some claim that she looks like you."

"She doesn't," McCoy replied.

"I can see that," Spock pushed back the pictures. "What is her name?"

"Jo. Joanna, but she hates it. She's just turned four. Lives with her momma just over the bridge from here, and I get her every other weekend."

"Then you are divorced."

"Yeah. Married for three and a half years," McCoy grimaced. "We stayed civil. Barely. We manage it for Jo."

Spock's gaze dropped to the photographs again.

"Look," McCoy said, "I get it if...if this is a complication too much, but I figured you deserved to know that now, not get it sprung on you further down the line."

Spock nodded. "Thank you."

"Is that a complication too much, or is a further down the line still on the cards?"

Spock frowned. "I...do not understand."

"Sorry, mixin' metaphors too much. I mean – does that put you off?"

"It is unexpected," Spock admitted, but he sat relaxed in his chair, "but not off-putting, no."

McCoy relaxed – and hadn't known he was tense – and tapped the side of his foot with his own under the table. "Maybe you'll meet her one day."

Spock grimaced. "I am not good with children."

McCoy snorted. "It's Jo. Nobody's good with Jo; she's a nightmare."

"You are her _father_."

"That doesn't make me stupid," McCoy pointed out. "Her nursery teacher is worth more than her weight in gold, I'll tell you that much."

Spock cocked his head again; something odd was flickering in his eyes, and McCoy gave up on reading it. He'd already had one drink too many to do that.

"C'mon," he changed the topic. If Spock wasn't going to throw a fit about his old life, then there was no need to dwell. "Let's get a game in before Jim gets here."

* * *

"Sooooo," Jim rose from the table and flashed that shit-eating grin. McCoy mentally groaned. He knew the truce couldn't last. "Have you done the nasty yet?"

"'The nasty'?" Spock asked blandly, taking his shot.

"Yeah," Jim didn't take his, intent on this line of conversation. "You know. The nasty, the horizontal tango, the beast with two backs."

"How Shakespearean," McCoy grunted.

Jim ignored him, frowning at Spock's completely blank face. "You're not following me, are you?"

"No."

"Jim, just call it what it is," McCoy said. "You sound like a twelve-year-old."

"Fine. Have you _made lurrrrrrv_ yet?" Jim grinned.

"Aw, _Jim_!" McCoy protested. "Jesus Christ, what are you, a harlequin romance novel?"

Spock blinked. "Made...love?"

Jim beamed.

"He means have we had sex yet," McCoy said, and Spock frowned minutely.

"You have already made enquiries."

"Yeah, but you didn't answer them," Jim parried, snickering at the expression on McCoy's face.

Spock altered his line of questioning. "The term 'make love' does not make _sense_."

"It's a stupid term made up by women who don't like the phrase 'fucking'," McCoy clarified, taking a long pull from his bottle. "And Jim, mind your own."

"Never," Jim said. "Gossiping is the only thing that gives my life meaning. Plus, it means Gaila leans over the bar to listen and I get to ogle her boobs."

"You ogle them whether she leans over the bar or not," McCoy pointed out.

"Yeah, but..."

"How would one _make_ an abstract concept?"

"Never mind," McCoy said.

"Have you, then?" Jim persisting, actually poking Spock in the ribs with his pool cue. He was a brave man, McCoy would give him that – if looks could _kill_...

"If I do not know how one would construct love," and yeah, Spock was toying with him now – he was like a goddamn cat, and Jim the dumbass mouse that didn't realise it was about to get brutally slaughtered, "then I fail to see how I could have done so."

"Fine. Have you fucked the good doctor until he screams yet?"

McCoy choked.

"No," Spock said flatly.

"Aw, _why_?" Jim actually pouted, which was a vaguely disturbing expression on the face of a twenty-three-year-old unshaven man.

"Because I do the fucking," McCoy said – never mind that he _hadn't_ – and immediately regretted it when Jim _crowed_ with delight, and that deadly expression was turned on him instead. "What? He'll never let it go."

"That's what he said," Jim snickered.

"Jim, if I don't slap you, I'm willing to bet that he will," McCoy said conversationally.

"I am tempted to slap the both of you," Spock muttered. "Jim. Play."

"Yessir," Jim said, and cocked his head. "Is he any good?"

" _Jim_."

"Okay, okay, I'm playing. Sheesh. It's just _sex_ – no need to be so _touchy_."

McCoy rolled his eyes, and glanced sideways at Spock. The man's expression was _icy_. Oh _man_ , he was in the shit for this one.

* * *

Spock was...something was off, and as they stepped out into the foggy night as _Harry's_ began to wind down, McCoy waved Jim off with an 'I'll catch you up' and turned with Spock towards the tiny parking lot, and the bike waiting within.

"You okay?" he asked, as they reached it in silence.

"Quite well." Clipped. _Not_ quite well.

"Uh-huh, and the truth?"

Spock glanced sharply at him.

"Look, if it's about the sex thing, I'm sorry," McCoy held up his hands. "I don't think before opening my mouth, you know that. And it was just Jim. You know what he's like; he would have pestered forever; better to let him think..."

"You are a doctor," Spock interrupted.

McCoy blinked. It was such a non-sequitur that his brain scrambled to catch up, and his mouth filled the space with: "Yeah."

Spock's jaw twitched vaguely.

"You have a problem with me bein' a _doctor_?" McCoy calculated, and it was just about the weirdest thing he'd ever heard. Most people _liked_ meeting doctors, even if it did mean every event he was ever invited to either involved every desperately lonely woman asking for a free mammogram in her hotel room, or insisting that _yes_ , smoking was _bad_ for the lungs to overweight men puffing away like they were the source of life itself.

"I...am not...enamoured with the medical profession in general."

"You work in it," McCoy pointed out dumbly. He'd seen the SynTech ID pass in the jacket pocket of Spock's leathers; he knew where he worked.

Spock said nothing.

"Okay, so – what? Bad experiences?"

"Yes." And if that wasn't an invite to drop it, McCoy didn't know what was. But then, he was exceedingly bad at taking orders.

"Like what?"

"I would rather not discuss it," and McCoy winced.

"Look at me."

Spock paused, dark eyes searching McCoy's face, and McCoy unwound to step closer and clasp his hands either side of Spock's ribcage.

"You don't wanna talk about it, fine," he said, "but would it help if I promise that I'm not one of those neurotic medics that keep food diaries and pulse monitors on everyone within a fifty metre radius?"

Spock's expression softened slightly, and McCoy rubbed his thumbs into the leather in what was rapidly becoming a habit.

"If you're ill or injured, I'll go a bit medical textbook on you, and I won't apologise for that – but you're not my patient, and I won't treat you like one. Okay?"

The relaxation that ran down Spock's spine was a relief, and McCoy dared to press forward for a quick, chaste kiss.

"I do not like doctors," Spock murmured between them.

McCoy snorted. "And I don't like guys that kick my ass in a game of pool and act smug about it afterwards. And yet here we are."

Spock offered him a very, _very_ small smile.

"I'll see you on Thursday," McCoy said, offering one last kiss before stepping back. "Drive safe."

The man was _still_ too hot in leather, damnit.

* * *

Spock took the keys from the ignition and simply sat in the parking lot for a long, long minute.

A doctor.

McCoy was a _doctor_.

Suddenly, this relationship had become...most unwise.


	14. Arc One, Part Thirteen

In early June, the hospital did what it usually did, and destroyed one of his Saturdays off by demanding that McCoy attend yet another conference and take notes on more medical ‘breakthroughs’ that actually wouldn’t be legal to work from for the next seven years anyway. As usual, Dr. Puri laughed him out of the office when he tried to wriggle out of it, and – also as usual – despite reserving two places, the hospital could only afford to spare one staff member at a time. And the only other doctor that McCoy knew who always took Saturdays off as well was one of the psychiatrists, Dr. Liz Dehner. And thanks to the month after his divorce, a bar downtown with lethal spirits, and an ill-timed running into one another outside of work, Dehner absolutely _hated_ him.

 

This year, however...

 

The conference was being held an hour away in San Jose, and Spock’s apartment at seven in the morning was bathed in a clear, early light. The man himself had been wary to agree to attending a medical conference, but had been captured by a lecture on advances in nanotechnology in the afternoon, and a promise from McCoy of paying for lunch. When McCoy kissed him at the door and coaxed him out, he smelled faintly of shaving cream and shower gel; he tasted of toothpaste and, somewhere in the darkness of his mouth, oranges.

 

“I’m real tempted to stay here with you,” he murmured, hands on Spock’s hips and thumbs under his shirt. It was the closest he’d ever gotten, and the skin felt sliver-thin and heated.

 

“Not in the hallway where my neighbours can see.”

 

“What neighbours?”

 

Spock drew back enough to incline his head left. “Mr. Mayweather routinely leaves for his morning run at seven fifteen.”

 

“Huh,” McCoy dropped one last kiss and stepped back. “I guess we better get movin’, then. I got a bag of nectarines in the car in case you want more.”

 

“I am sure I will survive,” Spock said dryly, retrieving a surprisingly casual messenger bag and locking his apartment door behind him. Surprisingly, he permitted McCoy to take his hand on the way down the stairs; he musta got up on the right side of the bed.

 

“Y’meant to do more on a date than just _survive_ ,” McCoy drawled as they broke into weak June sunlight and headed for the car. “And it’s an hour drive, and most of it in traffic. You’ll be homicidal before long.”

 

“As you would be the only other person in the vicinity, that is more your problem than mine.”

 

“Well, at least my ex-wife would like you,” McCoy shrugged, dropping into the driver’s seat and revving the engine obnoxiously as Spock stowed his bag in the trunk. “Kiss for luck?”

 

“You are pushing your luck.”

 

“I swear I’ll defend you from all the crazy doctors,” McCoy snickered, throwing the car into reverse, ignoring the groan from the gearbox, and reversing out of the still-crowded parking lot.

 

“As you are one of their number...”

 

“Yeah, but you like me.”

 

“Apparently.”

 

*

 

The conference was...not as bad as Spock had feared.

 

The hotel that had been rented for the event was a luxurious, spacious place with excellent air conditioning to ward off the encroaching summer heat, and a cleanliness bordering on the mildly obsessive – although perhaps that had been part of the selection criteria. More importantly, whilst almost every else there was a medical doctor or clinical surgeon (or both, in the odd case) there was no expectation, either from the organisers or the participants, of socialisation, and so Spock could limit his exposure to the nagging curiosity and sharp eyes of medical personnel down to simply McCoy.

 

The subjects themselves were interesting enough – while Spock had no interest whatsoever in two opening half-hour talks on progressions in clinical psychiatry, there was rather more to be made of an hour-long discussion of the results of preliminary experiments with prosthetics that could actively feel sensation in a similar manner to biological limbs, and Spock rather got the impression that the following talk on possible genetic markers for motor neurone disease were of greater interest to himself than McCoy.

 

For all that McCoy had grumbled and groaned to Spock about the hospital forcing his attendance, he was largely attentive and apparently interested in the subject matters covered. He took notes in at least three different lectures (although when Spock glanced at his surprisingly tidy handwriting, the third lecture was largely being criticised as ‘some moron bleating about bullshit that’ll be discredited in another year’) and when they broke for lunch, spent the first fifteen minutes still ripping holes into the theories posited in said third lecture.

 

“I guess,” he said when he ran out of steam, “you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

 

“A limited idea, as my research naturally does not extend to the surgical ramifications,” Spock allowed. “Your passion for your work is somewhat...”

 

McCoy raised his eyebrows. “Somewhat _what_?”

 

“Alluring,” Spock finished as McCoy unlocked his car.

 

“Alluring, huh?” McCoy grinned. “Grab your lunch and let’s find some grass. I feel like a student again.”

 

“In what matter?”

 

“Attendin’ lectures sitting next to a ridiculously attractive man,” McCoy returned easily as they made their way up the bank beside the parking lot to a long stretch of lawn that seemed to be owned by the hotel, but used for absolutely nothing. Such was America, Spock had long since come to learn.

 

Spock understood what he meant about feeling particularly young, however: they sat on their jackets, close together and cross-legged, and McCoy would occasionally push orange segments between Spock’s lips as they discussed the morning’s research topics and (for some reason) the array of hideous ties half the lecturers had been wearing. The polluted haze that permanently shrouded San Francisco cleared by the outskirts of San Jose, and so the sun was warm enough that even the low breeze didn’t force a chill; twice, McCoy skittered his fingers up Spock’s bare arms, but said nothing. The other attendees left them alone; none came up to sit in the grass at all, never mind converse with them, and Spock felt himself relaxing enough that by the time McCoy inched closer and wound an arm around him, he did not protest it.

 

“You’re pretty relaxed, given you’re not a fan of doctors.”

 

“This is not as bad as I was expecting,” Spock confessed.

 

“Yeah, last thing any of these guys want is a fresh patient. I’m bettin’ a lot of ’em took Friday off to travel even if they didn’t need to,” McCoy thumbed a belt loop absently. “Why aren’t you a fan of doctors, anyway?”

 

Spock tightened.

 

“Just askin’,” McCoy said easily enough. “You said a bad experience, that’s all. Incompetent?”

 

“Merely ongoing,” Spock said tightly.

 

“Oh. You were ill as a kid?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Makes sense,” McCoy shrugged. “Nobody likes doctors when they’re little. Shoulda heard Jo when I had to take her for her first shots. Howled like I’d set the devil himself on her.”

 

Spock felt his spine relaxing again almost absently. He was not a fool; he knew basic psychiatry when he heard it, and McCoy had obviously taken his fair share of courses. “You are distracting me.”

 

“Yep,” McCoy admitted freely, tugging on the belt loop lightly. “I’m just curious; don’t wanna go upsettin’ you.”

 

“I am not _upset_.”

 

“Sure,” McCoy shrugged. “And I don’t hate dentists.”

 

Spock eyed him dubiously, and McCoy offered a grimace.

 

“I had a root canal when I was about twelve,” he said. “Hurt like hell. Never got over it. Or my outrage at my momma for dragging me there.”

 

Spock suspected that he was lying, or exaggerating. It simply seemed too convenient – and for a doctor to have a dislike of the dentist seemed unlikely. But if he was, he was lying very well – and what did it matter? He had passed by the subject easily enough; he did not push unnecessarily, and that more than anything drove Spock to touch his fingers to McCoy’s on his belt loops and offer a miniscule smile.

 

“Damn,” McCoy whistled. “You oughta smile more often; it’s a good look.”

 

Good or not, it was kissed away. The tang of orange juice was sharp on McCoy’s tongue, but the kiss was rather slow and languid, merely connective rather than carnal, and Spock felt the first stray sparks of a strange, swelling anticipation low in his gut.

 

When McCoy pulled back, said something about the time and the next lecture and pulled one of his many, many faces, the strange something remained.

 

And it was growing.

 

*

 

The rest of the afternoon passed excruciatingly slowly. McCoy was old enough to recognise the impulse, and young enough to still _have_ the impulse: when in company of new partner (boyfriend, man, whatever the hell gay people called the other half of their relationships), spend as much time as possible completely wrapped up in them.

 

Suffice it to say, the post-lunch lectures were going in one ear and out the other.

 

He wasn’t the only one. Spock seemed...distracted. He was absent for most of the first lecture, and downright fidgety (which was a sight in and of itself) for the forty-five minute drone on some new asthma medication (though that could have just been that it was easily the most boring thing McCoy had ever heard). McCoy _never_ knew what was going on in Spock’s head – and judging by Jim, he never would – but whatever it was, it wasn’t anything to do with what was in the conference hall.

 

Or maybe it was, he amended when he squeezed Spock’s hand during a lecture changeover, and wasn’t immediately brushed off. Just not anything being _said_ in the conference hall.

 

McCoy didn’t hear the rest of it, after that. The last hour slid by sickeningly final, until the lights were dialled up and the organiser was bleating some thanks over the cacophony of people packing up to go _home_ , like sane people did on a Saturday afternoon, and McCoy realised they’d been sat thigh-to-thigh when Spock rose and folded his jacket neatly over his arm.

 

“I didn’t listen to a word of that,” he confessed as they passed out into the red-carpeted hall and followed the trickle of bored-looking medical staff to the exit.

 

“I thought that was the point?”

 

“It was, but I still didn’t listen,” he shrugged. “Too busy thinking about you.”

 

“If I am a distraction, perhaps you should not have invited me.”

 

“After that lunch break? Hell, I’d work twenty-four hours a day if I got that meal break every time.”

 

Spock’s left eyebrow rose, and McCoy fought momentarily to keep his hands to himself. The man was _lethal_ when he pulled that face.

 

“You are an easy man to please, then.”

 

“I dunno. It coulda been better, but I doubt you’d be up for that in public.”

 

“I doubt the local law enforcement would be either.”

 

“I notice that wasn’t a no.”

 

“As I do not wish to have a criminal record, it most certainly is a no,” Spock replied primly as they left the lobby for the sunlight again. It was beginning to fade to the deep gold of early evening; the clouds on the horizon were a dark grey smear against the sun.

 

“But not a no for the reasons it would usually be a no.”

 

“Which are?” Spock asked as they reached McCoy’s car.

 

“Which are that you actually have an objection to my removing your clothes with my teeth.”

 

“I would not recommend it; it would be rather time-consuming, if somewhat amusing to watch.”

 

“Smartass,” McCoy groused, popping the trunk and running a finger down Spock’s bare arm when he dropped his bag into the available space. “Shall we catch dinner on the way back?”

 

“Literally?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then yes.”

 

“I wasn’t recommendin’ fishin’ in the bay,” McCoy groused, slamming the trunk and thumping down into the driver’s seat. “I need to get the suspension seen to.”

 

“Jim would...”

 

“...do it for free, I know, but then my car’d explode next time I tried usin’ the brakes,” McCoy interrupted, and Spock let out a huff of air that might have been a laugh. “Don’t I get a kiss before we set off?”

 

Spock hesitated, glancing into the parking lot. The crowd had dissipated, and McCoy leaned over.

 

“Nobody’s watchin’,” he coaxed, and after another beat, Spock’s hands smoothed up his neck, and his lips were warm on McCoy’s. The tart fruit taste had faded a little; he opened his mouth when McCoy slid a hand around the back of his neck, and there was something tempered in his movements that hadn’t been there at lunch.

 

“There is a Chinese takeaway,” Spock breathed over his mouth, nose tucked into McCoy’s cheek as if hesitant to move away, “three blocks from my apartment. We could get dinner from there, and you could...stay the night.”

 

McCoy paused, drawing back barely enough to look him in the eye.

 

“I have...enjoyed today, and do not wish for it to end just yet,” Spock clarified, his words barely audible between them. “Stay the night with me.”

 

“Does this Chinese place have duck spring rolls?” McCoy asked. He knew how breathless he sounded; when Spock kissed the corner of his mouth, he knew he’d been heard.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Deal,” and McCoy peeled himself away with one last lingering kiss.

 

He recaptured Spock’s hand on the highway, and didn’t let go until they hit the suburbs of home, and the shadowy apartment building that awaited.


	15. Arc One, Part Fourteen

For all that he gave off this sophisticated impression, Spock wasn’t above takeout and a movie, as McCoy discovered that very same evening. He shrugged off the suggestion of a restaurant as they approached San Francisco, said that the takeaway would suffice quite nicely, and then his hand had been on McCoy’s thigh and he’d said something about having cable.

 

McCoy was in fucking love.

 

How he kept the composure to drive was anybody’s guess, but he somehow got them back to that apartment block without crashing, and entertained himself for a good ten minutes by rubbing his hands just about everywhere they could go while Spock stuttered out their order into his cell phone.

 

Spock’s couch was just about big enough to allow McCoy to straddle Spock’s thighs and kiss the living daylights out of him, sucking away the taste of that orange from lunch, and find the worn rub of another old filling tucked away amongst his molars. He had drunk water all day; under the sharp tang of the fruit was _him_ , and McCoy refused all attempts at disengaging or moving the kissing elsewhere, intent on cataloguing _exactly_ what that taste was.

 

They jerked apart in surprise when the buzzer went off, and Spock’s eyes were black as space.

 

“Er...you get the food, I’ll get the movie,” McCoy muttered, nipping at his left ear before heaving himself up and away, feeling chilled from the lack of body contact. He felt overheated in the crotch, though, and he readjusted his jeans as he plucked a disc from the DVD collection at random. He hated this part: the part where you _needed_ a goddamn fuck, but couldn’t necessarily get one. And like hell he’d force the issue; if Spock wanted to go slow, they’d go slow.

 

But damn if it wasn’t doing things to his blood pressure.

 

Spock returned with plastic bags just as the opening credits to some unidentifiable action sci-fi thing began to roll, and folded down onto the couch well within McCoy’s personal space to pass over a plastic box of Chinese food and a set of cheap wooden chopsticks.

 

“You’re serious?” McCoy asked as Spock broke his own apart and settled. “I can’t use these.”

 

“Then now you may attempt it.”

 

“...This is just for your entertainment, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes.”

 

McCoy stared at him for a long moment, as Spock placidly opened his own plastic box and dug in, wielding the chopsticks with a graceful expertise, and groaned.

 

“I hate you.”

 

Spock quirked an eyebrow, and watched silently as McCoy struggled to break them, and then struggled even more to copy the way Spock held them. Oddly, he held them with his left hand, and McCoy couldn’t hope to do that, but his right refused to operate in the same way until Spock leaned over and adjusted them himself.

 

“Feels weird.”

 

“So did a fork, the first time I learned to use it.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“My father was a very traditional man,” Spock quipped.

 

McCoy grunted, and the weird feeling got weirder as he attempted to actually use them. They were unwieldy, clumsy things, and apart from using them like spears, there was no way he was actually going to be able to lift anything with them.

 

“Forks,” he said after the fifth attempt, “are infinitely more sensible.”

 

“To clumsy Western hands, yes,” Spock agreed, rescuing the fallen piece with his own and pushing it past McCoy’s lips, following it with a brief kiss before rising and retrieving a fork from the kitchenette.

 

“Thanks,” McCoy said, abandoning the chopsticks entirely, and shifting when Spock resettled even closer than he had been before. He had folded his legs up under himself, sitting on his own feet, and his knees ended up tucked over McCoy’s thighs and pressed into his stomach lightly.

 

They made a good table, and it was an excuse to drape one arm over his legs and rub at the slope of his shins lightly.

 

The movie was adequate – poor in itself, but excellent for the scientific impossibilities within it that had Spock’s sass out in full-force, a derogatory comment following almost every single line of dialogue. McCoy found himself snickering into his Chinese, and then joining in as the hero survived not one, but _four_ explosions that would have, in reality, ripped his face clean off his skull. By the time they had progressed halfway through the movie, and Spock untangled himself to throw away the empty boxes and retrieve another couple of beers, McCoy had completely lost track of the actual plot, but he knew that it was stupid.

 

He was then very thoroughly distracted by Spock returning, handing over a frosty bottle of opened Asian beer, and – sitting down in his lap.

 

“Whoa,” he said, even as he locked an arm across the top of Spock’s thighs and hauled him a hair closer. “You plannin’ on feeding me that too?”

 

“No,” Spock said flatly, taking two healthy swallows of his own drink before placing the bottle on the floor, wrapping his fingers into McCoy’s hair, and kissing him.

 

McCoy could get with that.

 

The fizz of the beer was most obvious, coating the inside of his mouth, but beyond that was the spicy burn of the takeout, and beyond _that_ – in the filling and the spaces under his tongue – was that indefinable taste of him, and McCoy cast the bottle aside, clasped a hand around the back of that dark hair and pulled him in as far as they could go, stealing air and heat and _lust_. He wasn’t a goddamn telepath, but he knew lust when he felt it, and he felt it – in the kneading massage of Spock’s fingers, in the clasp and tug of his lips and tongue, in the flex of his spine, and when that flex got stronger, in the growing bulge in his pants.

 

He had never gotten far, and he half-expected to be batted away when he released Spock’s head and slid daring fingers up beyond the hem of his t-shirt. His stomach was jumping; a thin trail of hair broke apart at his abdomen, and reformed at his chest in a scattered pattern. His chest rose and fell fractionally too fast, and when McCoy slid his fingers to the back to feel the steep run of muscle and spine and the _power_ there, everything arched forward again, and he clutched greedily to feel the movement.

 

“Off,” he ordered hoarsely, tugging at the hem, suddenly desperate to see and taste, and Spock disengaged to peel it off and up, throwing the cloth aside and revealing a long, lean torso outlined in sleek, wiry muscle and smattered with hair and the odd thin, white scar raised against the flesh. His ribs flexed between McCoy’s hands, his own bare arms settling either side of his head to press those skilled hands into the couch cushions, and the muscles were outlined in sharp, tense outlines of harsh, rigid masculine _brilliance_.

 

With a jolt of incredulity, McCoy realised that Spock was _nervous_.

 

To hell with nerves. Nerves could fuckin’ wait. Right now...

 

McCoy explored. He’d never got this far, and the urge to commit every last inch to memory was too strong. He rubbed his calloused hands roughly over dark nipples, but a better reaction was to be found in pressing his mouth around the dull outline of Spock’s collarbone and sucking hard enough that a sharp gasp erupted above him and a hand forced his head to remain there, clutching tightly in his hair. He grinned and did it again, running his hands up the smooth, unmarked skin of his back and digging in around jutting shoulder blades, kneading and plucking until the erogenous zones made themselves known in hitched breaths and the sudden pressure against his shoulders, pushing him back until Spock arched back down and his tongue was once trying to wrap itself around McCoy’s and set up home in his mouth.

 

Spock’s back was fairly flexible, he discovered when he ran both hands up the back of his calves and pressed into his knees until he rose up on them. The height difference should have made the kissing difficult, but Spock’s upper body curled over to continue without a break, and with his pelvis suddenly a heckuva lot closer to McCoy’s chest, McCoy wasn’t going to voice any complaints. Kneading and squeezing his way up the back of his thighs had those long fingers tugging at his hair again, and a shiver rocked up that back and interrupted the kissing with a measured breath when he got both hands around that ass and _squeezed_.

 

Goddamn, but it felt as fine as it looked.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” McCoy breathed low around Spock’s tongue, and Spock broke off kissing him entirely when he kept kneading at his ass with one hand, and worked the other around to clutch and tug encouragingly at the bulge threatening the integrity of his fly. Forehead-to-forehead, they were breathing each other’s damp air, and when Spock’s eyes slitted open again, they were dark gashes in his flushed face.

 

McCoy could see the uncertainty there.

 

He tilted his chin to kiss that swollen mouth, lapping at the front of his teeth and the tip of his tongue, as he withdrew his hand back to kneading at the swell where his buttocks left his thighs. Spock’s hands shifted restlessly at his neck and shoulders, before he sat back and up and, very deliberately, dropped his hands to his jeans and popped the button.

 

There was a slip of thin muscle just above the waistband, and McCoy leaned in to mouth at it as he drew his hand back to tug the zipper down and massage the interest behind it; Spock’s upper body bowed over his head, fingers digging into his shoulders, and there was a breathless, inarticulate noise above him.

 

“Mm?” McCoy began to pull at the jeans, loosening their grip around Spock’s hips until the waistband of his dark boxers was revealed. Diesel branded, black, hiding _nothing_...

 

“I want you,” came the hollow whisper, and hell if _that_ wasn’t a bolt of lust straight to the balls.

 

“You got it,” McCoy drawled, letting go and shifting to draw one foot up awkwardly under himself and push up off the couch. Spock refused, largely, to go; he hung on, suddenly intent on the abandoned kissing again, and he’d snuck another mouthful of beer in there somewhere that McCoy swiped from his tongue shamelessly.

 

He ground their dicks together, caught at Spock’s waist when he shivered dangerously, and began to walk them backwards towards the bedroom.

 

In the doorway, Spock’s fingers caught under the hem of McCoy’s shirt and he lost it, throwing it carelessly aside to the wooden boards and catching an ear to suck and gnaw at the lobe and shell while long, dextrous fingers smoothed themselves over his pectorals and ribcage, tugging lightly at his chest hair and once, twice, at his nipples before raking the nails loosely downwards and slipping into the waistband of his own jeans.

 

McCoy pressed closer, one hand up to brace them against the doorframe, and breathed, “Go on.”

 

He buried his teeth into the nearest artery in Spock’s neck, and felt the sharp tug of his fly being opened with less than gentle hands. He broke off to swear when cool fingers wrapped around his cock and three long, slow pulls dragged his arousal into the almost-painful stage before he interfered.

 

“You wanna do this, you gotta stop doing _that_ ,” he drawled, trapping Spock’s hands between them, Spock against the doorframe, and Spock’s dick against his own groin. “You’re overdressed.”

 

“As are you,” Spock returned, his voice almost gone, and he arched into McCoy’s body almost entirely when McCoy slid his hands between Spock’s boxers and his skin, and pushed those jeans down off his hips entirely. They fell to the floor with a thump, the black boxers close behind, and suddenly he had an armful of a finally, deliciously, _fuckably_ naked Spock.

 

“Bed,” McCoy ordered around another hickey. “Get supplies, and get to bed.”

 

Spock withdrew reluctantly, and McCoy palmed himself idly as he watched. Spock’s clothes had underplayed his ass, and even though his poise was more self-conscious, it was still _poise_ , his grace evident in lean, white limbs and the wire frame of muscle and bone. No wonder the son of a bitch squirmed; he was _built_ for it.

 

McCoy had never dropped his pants so fast in his life. Spock sat on the edge of the bed to watch him drop his underwear, and he stepped out of them to cross the six feet to the bed and bear down on him, pushing him back against the mattress and thin pillow, and finally get their cocks to cross paths without goddamn _clothes_ in the way.

 

The jolt told him everything he needed to know.

 

He settled only briefly, licking another deep kiss into the back of Spock’s mouth before slipping the condom and tube from trembling fingers and beginning to suck a path down to the bruised collarbone, shifting to settle between his thighs and delay the impending end by reciting baseball scores in his head for a good minute before stroking his hands down to those biteable hips and pushing his thighs wider apart.

 

He discovered another spot for the biting as he coated his fingers in lubricant and began to tease and loosen Spock’s muscles; at the base of his ribcage on the left, where he sucked hard as a distraction method, there was an inch-wide bundle of nerves that caused a noticeable ripple to scatter across Spock’s torso and an easing of the nervous tension from head to toe.

 

“You got a real thing about teeth, y’know,” he murmured, kissing the spot before sucking again, and slipping his first finger in to the second knuckle in time with the momentary relaxation. He tensed again, the pressure _immense_ , and McCoy grunted. “Easy. Easy, darlin’, you’ll break my damn hand if you keep that up.”

 

Spock took a shaky breath, and the pressure eased fractionally. McCoy started some shallow thrusts with his hand, stroking the other over his hip and abdomen soothingly. The moment he attempted to push that finger in further, however, the tension was back, and he hissed.

 

“Ease up. Try and relax for me,” he coaxed, and when the pressure eased again, he rose to resettle over Spock’s body and pull them both to the side, nipping kisses around a swollen mouth and rubbing his slick fingers around Spock’s ass, kneading at the muscles. “Relax, darlin’. You’re too goddamn tense right now, and this ain’t one of those _lie back and think of China_ jobs.”

 

“Japan,” Spock returned, and rocked his hips into McCoy’s. He had softened somewhat, but not entirely, and McCoy felt the stir of renewed interest when he got his lips around Spock’s adventurous tongue and sucked. He was relaxing under the attention, or the reassurance, and this time pressing into him resulted in nothing more than a breathless murmur and a shiver.

 

“Whatever,” McCoy mumbled into his neck, and Spock’s fingers began to stroke through his hair again. With the successful application of teeth to a shoulder, McCoy managed to ease a second finger in beside the first, and he kissed at the first traces of sweat that broke out on Spock’s forehead. “Fuck me, you’re hot like this.”

 

“It has...” Spock took a breath, and bit at McCoy’s ear sharply. “I have not...”

 

Whatever he hadn’t done was lost forever when McCoy crooked his fingers and pressed to find – oh yeah, he found it, the arch and sudden vicious clutch of that hand in his hair a perfectly accurate conveyance of Spock’s feelings right then, and he circled his fingers loosely as he withdrew them to add the third.

 

“Fuck,” he said again as Spock’s tongue found its way back into his mouth. His skin was flushed hot, damp with sweat, but the muscle underneath pliant and powerful as he moved, beginning to rock into McCoy’s hip in time with the thrusts of his fingers.

 

“Leonard,” Spock breathed. “Leonard, please,” and he drew up one leg to drape over both of McCoy’s and draw him closer, their cocks brushing again in a spark of surprising, lightning pleasure.

 

“N’t yet,” McCoy groaned, flexing his fingers and receiving a sharp nip to the neck. “Little longer, darlin’, j’s...”

 

A hand insinuated itself in his crotch and dragged warm, sweat-wet knuckles over his balls and up the underside of his dick.

 

“Dirty fucking trick,” McCoy growled, even as he dislodged Spock from his position and withdrew his hands, reaching for the condom and ripping open the wrapper with vicious ferocity. Spock was breathing hard, eyes wild in his face, and stroking an angry erection with expectant lust written on his flushed features.

 

Spock was unresisting as he turned him over, dragging him up by an arm around the waist onto his knees, and palming at the cleft of his ass again; the first press of the head of his cock produced a momentary stiffness, and then he wrapped his fingers around the base of Spock’s dick and the tension eased again.

 

“Bear down on me,” he said, lapping kisses to the sweat beginning to collect in the small of that sleek back, and he pushed forward.

 

The pressure was instantaneous, and the harsh noise that wrung itself from Spock’s throat not entirely welcome, and McCoy paused with just the head clutched tight inside, resisting every instinct he had to just thrust and be damned with the consequences. He rubbed at the knotted spine, kissing at the lines of bone, and curled his other hand into the crease of hip and stomach, stroking. Thank God for the condom dulling things at least a little; he’d have gone by now if they’d barebacked this.

 

“Goddamn,” he breathed harshly. “God-fucking-damn it, Spock, you oughta be illegal. This is...this is way too fucking hot.”

 

It took several measured breaths, and the tangle of their clammy fingers at Spock’s hip, but the vice began to slowly ease, until Spock eventually canted his hips and squeezed McCoy’s fingers until he pushed forward again, slow and deliberate and fighting his own instincts, until three-quarters of him was swallowed whole and clutched in a pressure that threatened to end things way too soon if he didn’t get this under control.

 

Digging the heel of his hand into his hip to suppress blood flow, he grunted and laughed.

 

“Alright?”

 

In answer, Spock pushed back against him, and McCoy groaned, instinct bleeding through until he was thrusting lowly, tilting his hips until he wrung that muted gasp again from Spock’s throat and the spine under his fingers snapped momentarily straight.

 

“ _Leonard_...”

 

“Right there, huh?” he asked, doing it again and groaning at the momentary squeeze. “Holy Christ. Holy goddamn _Christ_...”

 

Slowly, he bowed over Spock’s lower body to kiss his back and groan his own experience into wet, jumping skin. When he curled his fingers around Spock’s erection, the heat pouring from it was unreal, and between the pressure and the warmth and the goddamn _breathing_ , and how in the fuck was _breathing_ that sexy...

 

Spock shattered first, with a low, almost inaudible whimper and a sharp thrust of his own that rocked through them both as the sheets and McCoy’s hand were suddenly wet with cum, not sweat, and the jerking half-motions of orgasm were enough to rip McCoy’s own orgasm out of him until his very _teeth_ hurt with the force of it, with the blood screaming in his veins and the air too thin, too fucking _thin_...

 

He didn’t move again until Spock finally twisted sideways and dislodged him, shoulder blades bruised and sharp. McCoy groaned and tucked an arm over his ribs.

 

“Fuck,” he mumbled, and Spock’s fingers came to stroke over his jaw. “Nuh-uh. I ain’t movin’. M’fucked out.”

 

A kiss was pressed to his chin, and he cracked his eyelids to peer at the sleepy serenity of Spock’s expression. His hair was messed and damp; his eyelids at half-mast, obscuring most of his eyes and therefore, by default, his expression. His fingers, where they stroked at McCoy’s five o’clock shadow, were clumsy and lax, clammy with cooling sweat.

 

He’d never looked so beautiful.

 

“Just the way you look right now made that amazing,” McCoy murmured, and Spock blinked at him before shifting and tucking his head against the pillow inches from the doctor’s.

 

After a moment of watching and ghosting his fingers over Spock’s now-stilled hand, McCoy forced himself from the bed, throwing the condom away as he padded through the living room to the bathroom, and wetting the first handtowel he came across. He cleaned himself off, smirking at the bruises liberally decorating his upper body, before returning to the bedroom and wiping the worst of the mess from Spock’s stomach, peeling the ruined sheet away to the foot of the bed and abandoning it.

 

“You always lose your brains after sex?” he asked rhetorically as Spock regarded him in silent drowsiness, and caught the hand that rose to kiss it. “C’mon, over you go.”

 

He’d be sore in the morning: the muscles in his upper thighs were already tensing as McCoy cleaned him up, and there was a little blood smeared on the towel by the time he turned him back over to let him sleep, but right now he looked so thoroughly unconcerned with it all that McCoy couldn’t help but chuckle and toss the handtowel onto the bedside table, allowing those clumsy hands to do their task and draw him back down.

 

“Gorgeous,” he murmured into the waiting kiss. “Go to sleep, sweetheart. You’re gonna feel like _hell_ in the mornin’.”

 

It was a single bed; he woke, in the morning, as wrapped up in Spock as when he’d gone to sleep.


	16. Arc One, Part Fifteen

“Are you free,” Spock had asked between kisses in the shadows of McCoy’s car the week before, “on Wednesday evening? I am required to attend a – function...”

 

“A boring work party?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Only if I can grope you in the bathroom.”

 

McCoy should have known better.

 

*

 

Spock did not enjoy the annual ‘party.’ Every year, the managerial team decided that the scientists were too reclusive in their labs, and did not form ‘teams’ or ‘bond’ with their colleagues properly, and would throw a function, usually at a local art gallery or somewhere else that held no interest for Spock, and insist that all the employees attended on their own time.

 

Spock had never intended to go. The first time, he had moved into San Francisco not two months earlier, and while he liked his colleagues well enough, he did not view the idea with much enthusiasm. It was Chris Pike who had insisted, laughing at him, and said that he would check personally with Spock’s superiors over whether he had or had not attended. And so Spock had gone, intent on showing his face and escaping as quickly as possible.

 

He had, instead, locked gazes with a pair of somewhat exceptional blue eyes over the buffet table, and had walked unwittingly into the next three and a half years of his life – three and a half years of air shows, road trips whenever San Francisco became too constricting, and a crooked, almost shy smile. Every function after that, he had attended in the company of another – until last year, when he had not attended at all, and Chris had been...most displeased. Perhaps, he reflected as his cell phone chirped and he brushed invisible lint from his shirt, this would appease him. Or simply shock him.

 

The night was balmy; the stairwell smelled faintly of an unidentifiable flower, and the wash of fresher (relatively speaking) air when he passed into the parking lot and toward the waiting car was welcome. The windows were down, the car cool, and McCoy’s offered kiss warm and undemanding.

 

“For the record, it’s rude to hold a man to any promises he makes when _your_ hands are near his crotch,” McCoy said as he took the car out of park and peeled back toward the road. “Where’m I goin’?”

 

“Right. You were in perfect control of your cognitive functions.”

 

“Perfect control my ass.”

 

“That is perfect as well, Leonard, but the fact that you agreed to attend remains.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” McCoy grumbled, but his hands on the steering wheel were relaxed. “I still say I oughta be able to grope you in the bathroom.”

 

“I have not been to this venue before...”

 

“I’ll settle for in the car afterwards.”

 

“...Agreed.”

 

McCoy chuckled, shooting him a look that was one part exasperation, one part fond, and one part sexually charged, as he paused at a set of lights. “Why d’you go? Wouldn’t have thought it was your thing, schmoozing with colleagues and bosses.”

 

“My sponsor requires it.”

 

“Your what now?”

 

“My work is funded by a neuroscience research charity; the founder, Christopher Pike, takes an...avid interest in the lives of his...subordinates.”

 

“So he’s a nosy bastard and if you don’t play ball, you lose funding?”

 

“He would not cut my funding,” Spock disagreed. “The next left, and an immediate right turn after that. Chris is not a vindictive man, merely...sociable.”

 

“Ah. So he’s like Jim.”

 

“How so?”

 

“Can make your life hell if you don’tplay ball, without being an asshole about it.”

 

“...Perhaps,” Spock allowed.

 

“I gotta say, I’m surprised.”

 

“About – straight on – about what, Leonard?”

 

“You bringin’ a man to your work thing,” McCoy said. “You never struck me as the out and proud type.”

 

“I am not,” Spock said. “It makes no sense to be proud.”

 

“Now there’s a non-answer if I ever heard on,” McCoy said. “Oh hell, please tell me that ain’t it.”

 

“No. Keep going.”

 

“Thank Christ. You put me in a room with modern art, and I am cancelling this date. I warn you now.”

 

“I believe it is a medical museum.”

 

“Much better,” McCoy said, breaking off to swear at another car that nonchalantly merged in a ridiculous place. “Fuckin’ city. Nobody here can damn well _drive_.”

 

The easy grumbling, the relaxed exchange, was something to get used to – but Spock was rapidly finding it to be something he looked forward to, the snaps and swipes and almost lazy way McCoy would capitulate (or not) and smile at him with one part affection and two parts sheer American arrogance.

 

He shifted uncomfortably, and said, “The next left, and find a parking space.”

 

“Backseat driver,” McCoy sniped.

 

“I am not in the back seat...”

 

“It’s a _sayin’_. Good God,” he muttered, inching the car into a space that seemed to defy the laws of physics. “Alright, so – best behaviour, or can I go straight for the booze and ignore your colleagues?”

 

“That would depend upon the colleague,” Spock said, getting out and eyeing the imposing entrance of the museum in front of them. They _did_ choose such...grandiose buildings. “Many of them partake in research more heavily involved with current medical practice than I; I am sure you will find someone to talk to.”

 

“Why, where’re you goin’?”

 

“For at least fifteen minutes,” Spock said as they walked up the steps (the place honestly resembled a courthouse more than it did a museum) and he handed his staff pass to the security guard, “Chris will insist upon monopolising my time and attention.”

 

“Fair enough,” McCoy said, eyeing the foyer as they stepped into a wide, glass-filled space peppered with people very much like Spock – looking comfortable in their suits, but simultaneously like they would rather be wearing something else. “Go kiss up to your boss. Not literally,” he added at the startled expression he received. “Do it literally and I’ll _punch_ your boss.”

 

“...I would not advise it.”

 

“I’m a doctor; I know just where to punch.”

 

“He was a soldier. I rather doubt he obeys current firearms regulations.”

 

“Touché,” McCoy chuckled, resisting the temptation to kiss him in front of his colleagues. “Go on, I’ll hold down the booze tent. And see if I can’t find some exhibits that’ll keep me awake.”

 

Spock eyed him dubiously, then simply nodded and stepped away. McCoy took a moment to appreciate the view as he walked across the marble to a grey-haired man leaning heavily on a cane, before tearing himself away and heading for the aforementioned booze tent. Which was, in reality, a line of tables with white paper tableclothes and lines of wine glasses.

 

Decent wine, however, so he stole a glass and wandered off through the halls.

 

It _was_ a medical museum, although the foyer and one hall off to the side had been cleared for the function, and it was easy to slip into the rest of the museum and wander the halls, eyeing the age-old instruments of torture that had long since fallen out of use, fashion or both. McCoy had never been much interested in medical _history_ , even as a student, but even he could stand amongst an array of barbaric bonesaws and appreciate what research did for a profession so fine-tuned – and still so ignorant – as medicine. No doctor _liked_ researchers – an age-old professional rivalry kept them down as cowards, shying away from actually _helping_ people and jammed into ivory towers, more intent with poking monkeys with electrodes than actually curing disease – but the shadows cast by the displays spoke of their necessity.

 

“Hey, are you lost?”

 

Another shadow – a moving, human one – joined them on the wall, and McCoy turned back towards the door to see a figure squinting at him, before a man in a cheap store-bought suit stepped into the glow from the dimmed display lights.

 

He wasn’t an especially tall man, perhaps McCoy’s own height, but he was good-looking in that messy, _alive_ way: ruffled red hair above a crooked (once broken, clearly) nose and large hands with well-kept nails wrapped around a wine glass half-drained. He looked to be the athletic type, or at least a baseball or football fan, broad-shouldered and confident in his stride, and the handshake he offered was firm, his eyes – somewhere between a pale blue and a brilliant grey – never leaving McCoy’s.

 

“No,” McCoy said. “I’m just lookin’ around.”

 

“Oh, a guest,” the man pumped his hand once more and let go. “Me too, I guess. Name’s McKenna. I don’t work for SynTech anymore, but – hell. Thought I’d come and see everyone, eh?”

 

“Dr. McCoy,” he introduced himself. “Or Leonard, whichever you prefer. I’m takin’ in the exhibits and the wine while they all catfight for fundin’ out there. I’ll head back out when they get drunk and start tellin’ stories.”

 

McKenna laughed. He had a wide smile, with a lot of teeth, that should have been eerie, but was rather charming instead. He had very well-put-together face, aside from the broken nose, and radiated a kind of confidence that...McCoy had seen before. In Jim. On the pull.

 

And then McKenna’s eyes flicked, however briefly, up and down, and McCoy almost chuckled. The one time he’d been hit on in _years_ – bar Spock, he supposed – and it was _after_ he’d hooked up.

 

“They don’t catfight unless you mention the _New Scientist_ ,” McKenna said. “Then it’s like Vietnam all over again. Dirty tactics and everything.”

 

McCoy eyed him dubiously. “You not a scientist?”

 

“Eh,” McKenna shrugged. “Did engineering at college, worked with – sorry, life story, I won’t bore you, but I got a short-term contract on this project with pacemakers. They were trying to make an equivalent for diaphragm regulation. Fell through, utterly failed. Ah well.”

 

“You didn’t renew your contract?”

 

“Nope,” McKenna said. “Training as a pilot now, actually. What about you? Doctor of what?”

 

“Doctor of patching up stupid drunk people on a Friday night,” McCoy said dryly. McKenna’s eyes were wandering again, and he’d gotten a good two feet closer. “And before you go gettin’ ideas, I’m flattered and all, but I’m with someone.”

 

“Here with someone?” McKenna pushed, not looking the slightest bit surprised at being caught.

 

McCoy narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

 

“Damn. Ah well,” he shrugged again. “You can’t blame a man for trying.”

 

“Sure,” McCoy said dubiously, stepping away and heading back to the light. “I better get gone. Nice meetin’ you.”

 

“And you, Leonard.”

 

McCoy gritted his teeth and headed back into the foyer.

 

*

 

McCoy was the youngest of four children, and time and distance had never rid him of the ability to _know_ when someone was watching him. He had rejoined Spock and was attempting to follow the lightning-speed geek-speak between him and Pike, but the prickle of awareness started up not ten minutes after leaving the exhibit. Glancing around from the conversation, he immediately homed in on McKenna, standing clear across the room and – watching not him, but Spock. The suspicion was confirmed when Spock took several steps away to dispose of his empty glass on a nearby glass counter, and McKenna’s gaze very obviously tracked his movements.

 

McCoy recognised the expression, because it was the same one he wore on his own face when Spock was around.

 

He was quite unprepared for the bolt of irritation that hit him. He had never been bothered by Jim’s constant flirting and overt physical affection – but then, he supposed, he knew that Jim would not actually make any such move in seriousness. McKenna, he was quite sure, had been hitting on him by the exhibits, and had now apparently turned his quest on Spock. Huh.

 

“While you’re on the move,” Pike called suddenly, holding his glass in Spock’s direction, and receiving an eyebrow. “Glass of the white, stat.”

 

“I am not a waiter.”

 

“Spock, generally, the guy who signs your paychecks? You do as he says,” McCoy smirked.

 

Spock sighed heavily – the alcohol must be beginning to affect his system – before taking Pike’s glass and crossing the room to the table.

 

“So, I’m sure Spock’s told you what I used to do for a living,” Pike said, far too casually, and McCoy just _knew_ what was coming.

 

“Sure did.”

 

“Right. Hurt him, and your remains will look like army rations.”

 

McCoy had to appreciate the creativity there. “Uh-huh. You’d have to beat Jim to it.”

 

Pike snorted. “Jim Kirk? From what I’ve heard, he couldn’t kick a puppy without getting a guilt complex.”

 

“If the puppy bit Spock, I’m pretty sure he could,” McCoy countered. “Anyway, it’s hypothetical. I ain’t gonna hurt him.”

 

“Just so we’re clear,” Pike shrugged; the cane squeaked a little on the floor. “He’s the most difficult son of a bitch I’ve ever met, and a brilliant mind, and life’s fucked him around one too many times. You don’t get to add to the count.”

 

“I don’t intend to,” McCoy said, turning to eye McKenna again. He was, once more, watching Spock. “He might hurt me in a minute, though.”

 

Pike cocked his head, but didn’t ask, and a moment later, reached for the offered glass as Spock returned.

 

“Thanks,” McCoy said, swiping Spock’s own glass and taking a healthy drink before handing it back and draping his arm around Spock’s waist, curling his hand around a jagged hip casually. He earned himself a slightly odd look, but Spock elected to ignore it, and picked up the geek-speak where it had left off.

 

McKenna was watching them, and frowning.


	17. Arc One, Part Sixteen

As usual, nearing the end of the allotted time for the function, the company CEO stood up to make a very boring speech, and Spock gave no objection when McCoy steered them towards one of the exhibit halls and they ducked out of sight of the rest of the party. It was not until then that Spock opted to question the hand around his hip, resting his hand over the fingers and cocking his head in silent question.

McCoy shrugged and said, "There was this guy checking you out."

"Was that why you kept looking around?"

"Yeah," he said, reeling Spock in until he was speaking not an inch from his mouth. "He hit on me earlier this evening, and then he was checking you out whole time you were talkin' to Pike."

"I see," Spock said. "Am I going to face questions about your conduct on Thursday morning?"

"Doubt it; he said he doesn't work with your lot anymore."

Spock backed up an inch or two. That was...unusual. "The company is too young to have many ex-employees."

"Well, he said he was."

Spock narrowed his eyes; there were only four or five of the scientists that had ever left permanently, although the managerial team changed more rapidly... "What was his name?"

"McKenna. Didn't say his first – what?"

Spock did not know quite how to react, but his face must have done something, for McCoy's change in tone was very abrupt.

"His first name is Neil," he said flatly.

McCoy narrowed his eyes, scrutinising. "Friend of yours?" he asked eventually.

"Not precisely. Neil is my former partner."

It took a moment. For a few seconds, McCoy looked none the wiser for the information – and then his face twisted.

"Former partner? Your _ex_? As in, your ex that Jim takes any opportunity to badmouth?"

"Yes, that ex."

McCoy _stared_. Spock could watch the struggle: McCoy reacted at times in a rather primal, emotional manner, and if his instincts were anything like Jim's, releasing him would be a rather bad idea until Neil had vacated the premises.

And then he relaxed again, the muscles of his arms easing around Spock's waist and back.

"You _dated_ that ginger moron?"

"Neil is a highly intelligent..."

"He's training as a pilot. Which means he wears aviator sunglasses and is a complete idiot."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "I...do not know where to _begin_ with the logical fallacies you have committed."

"Then don't. Jesus. _That's_ your ex-boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"Your taste in men is definitely improving."

"Aesthetically, perhaps. He did not make such a habit of cursing."

McCoy snorted, and leaned in to nuzzle the spot under Spock's left ear. "You fuckin' love it, though."

Spock swallowed, gathered his composure – McCoy had a _way_ of ridding him of it – and pushed against his chest.

"Not here."

McCoy chuckled lowly in his ear, then let go, letting Spock step back and straighten his jacket. "You got work in the mornin'?"

"Indeed."

"Your place, then?"

He would regret it in the morning – the lack of actual sleep, the fact that he _would_ be seen leaving in McCoy's company and Amelia Epstein would undoubtedly spread it around the entire workforce that he had a new boyfriend and had 'done the nasty' the night before, _and_ the ridiculous temptation that McCoy would be in the morning...

"Very well."

* * *

"I think you're having me on about dating McKenna," McCoy said, leaning against the wall while Spock unlocked his apartment.

"I assure you, I am not," Spock said serenely as they entered. "Would you like another drink?"

"Sure." He had not drunk enough wine to get buzzed – he _was_ driving after all – but he could use another now. And the sight of Spock's ass bent over the fridge was an unexpected bonus, and he grinned. "No, seriously. I thought you had an ex- _girlfriend_."

"I do; two, in fact. However, Neil is your immediate predecessor."

"So what did you and the ginger have in common, then?" McCoy asked, taking the offered bottle of weak beer and Spock's hand in one easy motion.

"What do you and I have in common?"

"Argumentative, stubborn son-of-a-bitch-ness," McCoy replied promptly. "What about you and him?"

Spock retrieved his hand to crack open his own drink. "Work. Motorcycles. He was also particularly interested in foreign languages, so we often spoke in Japanese."

"Huh," McCoy said, sliding a hand around Spock's ass. "How long were you together?"

Spock narrowed his eyes. "Why are you asking?"

McCoy shrugged. "Checking out the competition."

"Neil is hardly competition."

"Checking out the once-upon-a-time competition. How long?"

"Three years, six months."

McCoy whistled, sliding closer. "That's a long damn time."

"It is inconsequential."

"Shut up and let my jealousy get some air."

"You are jealous?"

"Sure," McCoy squeezed a handful of that ass. "He got three and a half years of this, and when _he_ looks at you across the damn foyer, he's looking right through the clothing."

"...So are y..."

Spock didn't get to finish the sentence, because McCoy's mouth caught the end of it, sucking it away. A moment later, he removed the bottles and pressed Spock up against the counter, trapping him; the denim of McCoy's jeans was too heavy, and the fabric of Spock's slacks too light. His fingers were cool when they unpicked McCoy's shirt from his jeans, whispering over the muscles of his abdomen before retreating back to the outside and beginning to pluck at the buttons.

"Neil was not so aggressive as you are."

McCoy growled and gnawed a bruise into Spock's neck, pressing his nose against a pulse and the faint, seedy smell of wine. "I'll show you aggressive."

Spock hummed lowly in the back of his throat; he tasted strongly of the strange combination of weak beer and strong wine, and shivered when McCoy dragged his tongue across the roof of his mouth, ripping the taste free. He had one hand in the small of Spock's back, fingers beginning to burrow beneath the belt, and the other beginning to fiddle with the buckle.

When Spock pushed his shirt off his shoulders, McCoy paused to drop it to the floor, and they moved from the counter. McCoy took no such care and attention, popping several buttons when he pulled Spock's shirt roughly open and exposed the pale skin and dark hair beneath (an opposition he had yet to get used to). As if by unspoken agreement, Spock's back hit the frame of the open bedroom door as McCoy dropped his head to rake his teeth along the sharp edge of collarbone and brought both hands to the counterproductive belt buckle. Spock's hands were doing their kneading thing in his hair again.

"What is it with you and my hair?" he demanded, licking a stripe up to Spock's jaw and smirking at the way his head rolled back and his hips rolled forward. The belt buckle popped apart with a clunk.

"I could ask you the same regarding my entire pelvic region," Spock – murmured. His voice was distinctly breathy, and McCoy stole what little of it remained, sucking hard on that dark tint of wine and ripping the useless belt from Spock's pants.

"Anyone who's seen your ass would say it's justified," McCoy returned, beginning to peel him from the woodwork and bully him toward the bed. The mattress bounced once when Spock landed, and again when his upper body fell back, prompted by the swift removal of his slacks and McCoy's hands skimming the front of his boxers deliberately.

"I do not believe..." he said, and cut himself off with a deep, raspy breath.

McCoy braced himself on his hands, leaning over the bed and Spock's chest to kiss him, the mattress forcing Spock's head into place and holding it there for him. He growled, not breaking it, when Spock's hands feathered down his chest, and then his own belt was being removed (with considerably more care and attention) and the buttons of his jeans plucked apart with deft skill.

Experimentally, McCoy dug his fingers under Spock's back and into the spine, running them from neck to base like spiders, and groaned aloud when Spock almost jumped up into him with a hiss and a convulsive clutching at his sides.

" _Leonard_."

"Alright, alright," McCoy nipped at the pulse (or muscle tic, either or) in Spock's jaw before standing and unceremoniously dropping his jeans and boxers to the floor, stepping out of them and bending just enough to remove his socks before ripping Spock's socks clean off and reaching for his boxers.

Spock's hands caught his at the waistband. "You are very optimistic."

It was an outright challenge, and McCoy's libido – already stirred up at the sight of his ruffled hair and blown pupils and the rising colours on his neck and shoulders – rallied at it.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he challenged, batting Spock's hands away and whisking the boxers down and away. "This," and Spock's hips jumped as he wrapped his hand around the base of that erection, "is mine, after all."

Spock raked in a shuddering breath, and McCoy let go to resettle over him, licking his way in laps from a jutting hipbone to the wire set of his pectorals.

"It is not yours," Spock managed, and McCoy raised his head to stare down at him.

"It is now."

McCoy caught a glimpse of Spock's pupils exploding to swallow the irises whole, and then his tongue was doing battle again and Spock's fingers were digging into his shoulders, clawed and ferocious and _fuck_ but he was hot. He was all pale, warm skin and raspy little breaths and the smell of handwash soaps and wine and thyme. He was a fucking _handful_ , twisting and jerking in McCoy's grip, and the creases of his hips were traps for unwitting fingers, and then his knees were digging into McCoy's lowest ribs and there was a definite _snarl_.

"Don't you fucking snarl at me," McCoy growled, slamming his shoulders back to the mattress and biting down on the shell of his ear in punishment. "Where the fuck's your supplies?"

Spock hissed and _licked_ the side of his face, the sensation strange and rough, and McCoy tugged on his earlobe and the soft spot behind the hinge of the ear and jaw as one of those dangerous hands disappeared and there was the rattle and clunk of a drawer being opened.

A moment later, Spock was pushing a tube and a wrapped condom into his hands, and hooking an ankle around the back of his thigh, angling and opening his hips in an invitation that just about blew McCoy's mind.

" _Stay_ ," McCoy said sternly, pressing one hand into Spock's sternum as he sat up and offered two fingers. "And I ain't doin' all the damn work."

Spock's look was nothing short of murderous, but he uncapped the tube and spread a generous amount of the lubricant onto McCoy's fingers, somehow managing to tease him even with that simple touch.

"I suggest you hurry," he spat, and McCoy licked at the join of his hip and thigh.

"Impatient, huh?" he guessed, circling with his fingers for a moment before pressing the index in, and biting hard on that hipbone when it rocked upward. "Squirmy little bastard, aren't you?"

Spock's response was to push against the restraining hand, and be slammed back down.

"I said _stay_ ," McCoy snapped, twisting his fingers and smirking when Spock pulled a face like he very much wanted to hit him. "You'll do as you're damn well told."

"I will if you cease wasting _time_ ," Spock snapped, and hissed when McCoy pressed his middle and ring fingers inside. The strain back of his head was just too enticing, leaving that long neck on display, and McCoy surged down to bite it again, his hand sliding to Spock's ribs and digging the fingers into the bones to keep him still as he worked. " _Leonard_!"

"Yeah?" McCoy asked idly, locating the tendon at the top of the shoulder to tease.

Spock's hips and waist hitched up again, and McCoy laughed.

"God _damn_ but you get impatient," he breathed, sitting back up and removing his hand with one final twist, reaching for the condom. "You'd think you never got a good fuck before – _stay_!" he snapped, slamming his hand back into Spock's chest and pinning him again briefly. When Spock subsided, he scowled and tore the packet open. "You sure as shit can't follow orders."

"I have no reason to follow yours."

"Oh, I'll give you a goddamn reason," McCoy said breathlessly, pressing the heel of his hand to the main artery in his pelvis to stop himself coming at the mere pressure of the condom. He'd almost dragged this out too long.

"I..."

"Shut up," McCoy said, clasping Spock's knee to his side and leaning over to kiss him. He'd ripped the taste of wine free – and he ripped away the gasp Spock made as he pushed inside, absorbing the arch and shake of his spine with his own body. "God _damn_." The pressure was _intense_ , worse – better – than the last time, and the first roll of Spock's hips had him moving without thinking, trying to keep the thrusts shallow but tempted, so _tempted_...

"Leonard..." Spock breathed wetly into his mouth. "Harder."

That did it. The instinct took over – the snap and draw of his hips shook the mattress the first time, and the entire bed the second; Spock's fingers clawed into his hair and his mouth sealed itself irreversibly over McCoy's, tongue and teeth fighting for dominance around the lust. His muscles shivered under McCoy's questing hands, wire and steel, and the tang of blood burst into the messy kissing when McCoy worked a hand between them and began to jack him in short, sharp pulls.

They didn't last much longer – between the hissing breaths, the slide of sweat, the _pressure_ , and the scratching tug of Spock's fingers, McCoy was driving closer to the climax, and artfully increased the torment on Spock's system when he rubbed his calluses over the underside of his cock and –

The _sigh_ he hadn't expected. The arch and spasm of muscle; the stuttering of the rhythm; the hitch in ribs – yes. The _sigh_ , the look of shattered, ethereal bliss, he had not – and the parted lips, angled throat and glazed eyes were enough to cause every last nerve to crumple and implode, slamming pleasure so intense it _hurt_ down every viable course and out into the surrounding world.

_Breathe_.

Fucking goddamn, but he couldn't _breathe_.

His arms were shaking as he pushed himself up, their skin parting with a dull, damp _shluck_ , and Spock's eyes slitted darkness in his face as McCoy pulled out carefully.

"Fuck, that's just about the damn hottest look you've ever worn," he groaned, gingerly removing the condom and tying it off, dropping it to the floor in a submission to the lethargy sinking into his very bones. He curled back around the overheated, damp body, rubbing his cheek again the nearest shoulder and receiving a murmur, and kicking the sheets up over their feet before reaching for them. "God _damn_."

Spock made a noise vaguely like a hum, and folded up an arm to rest the hand over McCoy's on his chest.

"So," McCoy asked after he had regained his breath somewhat. He somehow wanted a cigarette after that performance. "How do I measure up against this stud of an ex-boyfriend of yours, then?"

Spock rolled his head to eye him, chest still heaving. The glaze in his eyes was beginning to subside. "Adequately."

McCoy propped himself up on one elbow. "How adequately?"

"Simply…adequately. What you lacked in finesse was compensated with enthusiasm, efficiency and physical attractiveness."

"Well, you sure know how to sweet-talk a guy," McCoy drawled, flopping back to the mattress with a snort of laughter. The dulled, sluggish reactions and the still-blown pupils told him everything he needed to know anyway. "Physical attractiveness, huh?"

"I believe you are becoming smug."

"Yep."

"Are you going to cease?"

"Nope," McCoy said, stretching luxuriously and not missing the sudden lack of eye contact. "You can't blame a man for being smug after he's finished with you."

"If this arrangement continues, your ego may suffer from irreversible inflation."

"I can deal with that," McCoy said, turning back over and beginning to walk a couple of fingers up the exposed ladder of Spock's lower ribs. "Let's see if we can't inflate a couple of other things."

The _look_ that he got was worth a million dollars.


	18. Arc One, Part Seventeen

“Jo, if you ain’t ready...!” McCoy hollered up the stairs as his watch beeped, informing him that he was due a phone call from Joss demanding to know why Jo was late for lunch in about five minutes.

 

The thundering of feet almost drowned out the trill of the phone, but McCoy ignored it – work would page, and Jim would just show up, and Joss would call his cell if it was that important – in favour of jogging up the stairs to catch Jo halfway rather than let her catapult down at breakneck speed.

 

“Daddy, that’s no _fair_ ,” she informed him loftily, pulling at his hair with both hands ( _sticky_ hands, even though she’d just washed them) before he put her down on the hall carpet. “Where’s my shoes?”

 

“Wherever you put ’em,” he said as the recorded message kicked in.

 

“On my _foots_ ,” she said, as though he were, quite possibly, the dumbest human being to walk the planet.

 

“Feet, Jo, and they’re obviously not there now. Did you put ’em in the closet?”

 

“No.”

 

“Y’sure?”

 

“... _Fine_ ,” she said, having to stretch on her toes to reach the handle of the closet door and letting half its contents pour out onto the hall floor when she finally did open it. The kid was a goddamn hurricane.

 

 _“Leonard...”_ Spock’s voice filtered through the machine, and Leonard paid half an ear to his changing their Thursday night date to another time, and half to the sounds of Jo demolishing the inside of the closet in the search for her sneakers. How could she not find neon yellow sneakers?

 

“Found ’em!” she yelled, emerging covered in cobwebs and dust, sneezing twice in an explosive and somewhat disgusting fashion, before throwing herself down on the stairs and thrusting one shoe at her father. “Daddy, you do ’em.”

 

“I know you can do laces.”

 

“But you do ’em,” she insisted. “Daddy,” she added when he gave in and prised her left foot into what was probably her left shoe. Kids’ sneakers were damn shapeless. “What’s a date?”

 

“Er,” he said, realising she must have listened to the message. “It’s when you go out for the evening with someone that you like, to get to know them.”

 

“Like when you go to Jim’s?”

 

“Ah, no. Like what your momma and I used to do.”

 

“Oh,” she worried at her thumbnail. “Who’s Spock?”

 

“He’s...”

 

“Are you goin’ on dates with him?”

 

“Yeah,” he said, lacing up her shoe and hauling her to her feet. “C’mon, Joanna, time to get you home.”

 

“ _Jo_!” she shouted, hitting him with the flat of her hand, and extremely ineffectively.

 

“Josephine,” he retorted, grabbing his keys and opening the door.

 

“ _Jo_!” she insisted, beginning a battery of blows at waist level. Thank Christ she hadn’t discovered upon punching someone in the crotch yet.

 

“Jocelyn.”

 

“That’s _Mommy_!” she caterwauled. “’M Jo! Jo, Jo, Jo, Jo!”

 

“Oh, you’re JoJo?” he demanded, sweeping her up until she squealed high above his head, and dropping her back on his hip like he’d hauled her around as a toddler, when Joss had been doing bar exams and court practicals until she talked in statutes. She had always come home to him wandering around their tiny house, swinging Jo around like a sack of rice, and had tutted at the shrieking.

 

_“You’ll make her sick. Or you’ll drop her. Oh, Len, just shut her up, please? It’s been a long day...”_

 

He chuckled, and tossed her again for good measure, eliciting a shriek and a haughty expression.

 

“’M _Jo_ ,” she grumped, but permitted him to manhandle her into the back of the car. “Daddy. Why are you datin’ Spuck?”

 

“Spock,” he groaned, wondering whether it was his genes or Jocelyn’s genes that made her so damn _persistent_ about everything. “So I can get to know him.”

 

“But you didn’t date Jim.”

 

“No, ’cause I don’t...like Jim like that.”

 

“D’you love him, Daddy?”

 

He blinked. “Er. It’s a bit soon for that, Jo.”

 

“Whaddaya mean?”

 

“Nothin’, kid. You’ll get it when you’re older.”

 

“Don’t wanna be older!” she sang, waving goodbye to Mr. Archer in his garden as they passed, despite having never spoken to him at all. “Y’have to date people! Datin’s _boring_.”

 

“If you keep that idea your whole life, Jo, I’ll be one damn lucky father,” he muttered.

 

“So are you and Spock like you and Mommy were?”

 

“Maybe one day.”

 

There was a pause, and he just _knew_ that a nasty question was coming. He _knew_ it. She never paused like that unless she’d fallen asleep or was about to drop a real doozy.

 

“But neither of you’s a girl. One of you’s gotta be a girl!”

 

Oh yeah, there it was. Jesus Christ. She was goddamn _four_. Maybe he shoulda stayed in Georgia and married some redneck farmer’s daughter that didn’t have the brains to _pronounce_ dating, never mind ask questions about it.

 

“Grown-ups can date whatever other grown-ups they want, long as that person wants to date them too,” he said carefully.

 

“But...but Uncle Jack dates Lucy, and Jim dates that blonde lady...”

 

McCoy had no idea _which_ blonde lady Jo was referring to, nor how she’d found out, and he didn’t want to know. Trust Jim to have a corrupting influence on his daughter when he wasn’t even around.

 

“And sometimes Jim’s dated other men,” he said. “And if Mommy wanted to date other women, then she could do that too.”

 

“Oh,” Jo said. Then finally, “Did you and Mommy used to date?”

 

“Sure did.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She went quiet again, but the solemn sort of quiet – you just knew that shit when your kid pulled silences, even in the back of the car, and McCoy eyed her in the rear-view mirror, watching her pluck at her (bright pink) tights.

 

“S’matter, Jo?”

 

“So maybe if you keep dating Spock, you’ll get married and have a new family?” she blurted out.

 

 _Oh_.

 

Oh hell.

 

“What’ll happen if I have a new family, Jo?” he asked, deciding to leave out the question of more kids until she was older. A whole lot older.

 

She mumbled something.

 

“Speak up, or I’ll park right outside Mommy’s house and we won’t go through the park,” he said, even as he was indicating to pull into the parking lot. He always walked Jo through the little park behind her mother’s house before taking her home, but she wasn’t quite up to recognising the parking area just yet.

 

“If you get a new family, you’ll be their Daddy and not mine,” she mumbled.

 

“Aw hell, Jo,” he muttered, squeezing the car into a slightly-too-small space and killing the engine. He didn’t continue until he had her and her bright pink backpack out of the car and standing on the verge, before kneeling down to her level and ignoring the damp seeping through his jeans. “You listen to me, JoJo. No matter what, I’ll always be your Daddy, okay? Whether me and Mommy aren’t together anymore, whether Mommy gets married again or I get married again, no matter if I have a hundred other kids and a goddamn hamster emporium, you’re always gonna be my little girl.”

 

She scrutinised his face, suddenly every inch his younger cousin when they’d been kids, examining a pique of kindness and wondering whether she was about to get a worm down the back of her dress, before deciding that he was speaking honestly, and threw her arms around his neck in a mildly suffocating grip.

 

“I don’t want you to have a hundred other kids,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

 

“No problem, kid,” he squeezed her tight and ruffled her hair. “You’re enough to handle.”

 

Predictably, she hit him, and he groaned theatrically before straightening up, allowing his knees to crack, and letting her slide her hand into his. “You wanna go around the pond, or through the woods?”

 

“Woods!” she squealed, tugging him towards the gates and the thin treeline that had been a faux wood ever since she was learning to stagger and falling on her ass every thirty seconds. “Daddy, what’s a hamster em-polly-yum?”

 

“Emporium.”

 

“I want a hamster emporium.”

 

“Ask Mom.”

 

“But I _want_ one!”

 

She was still chanting about hamsters – not that McCoy thought she actually knew what they were – by the time they reached the white gate and the tidy lawn and the frankly alarming fishing gnome that was Joss’s front garden, and when the front door opened at the squeak of the gate hinge, Jo’s hand was torn from his and she catapulted up the path, blissfully forgetting her anxiety in favour of screaming _“MOMMY!”_ as loud as possible.

 

Joss still looked mostly like the redheaded seventeen-year-old that had bowled eighteen-year-old Leonard McCoy off his feet all those years ago. She was a slender, graceful woman with a head of fiery red hair and pale skin, her deep brown eyes made all the more striking by the rest of her colouring. Her hair was piled up in a bun nowadays, and there were a few more lines and a few less freckles, and her smile was sedate instead of the passionate laugh that McCoy had adored about her, but she was the same woman now, answering the door in her wrinkled pantyhose and rolled-up sleeves and kneeling to catch their whirlwind of a daughter and mesh the blonde and the fierce red together in a hug.

 

It didn’t hurt like the first few visits after the papers went through, but something still ached inside, watching his ex-wife and his little girl.

 

“Mommy, I want a hamster emporium!”

 

Well, she didn’t used to glower like that either. Law school taught you some shit.

 

“I made a flippant remark,” he drawled.

 

“Mommy, who’s Spock?” Jo demanded when her request for a hamster empire went obviously unchallenged, and therefore not denied.

 

“I – who?”

 

“Daddy’s dating a Spock,” she said. “He’s...he’s a Spock. Tell her, Daddy!”

 

McCoy grimaced. “He’s...this guy,” he shrugged, and one sculpted eyebrow rose. “Friend of a friend. We’ve been...testing the waters for a couple of months.”

 

“I see,” Joss said. “Has he met Jo?”

 

“ _No_ , Mommy, or I’d _know_ what a Spock was,” Jo huffed. “Mommy, can I have a hamster?”

 

“Jo, why don’t you go and show Uncle Jack what Daddy bought you on Saturday?” Joss said diplomatically.

 

Long live being four; Jo took the suggestion at face value and tore off into the house on the search for the wayward Jack.

 

“Joss, I’m not stupid. Hell, I don’t even know if this is going to come to anything yet. Of course he hasn’t met Jo.”

 

“Does he know about her?”

 

“Sure,” McCoy shrugged. “Didn’t seem all that put out by it.” _Or interested_ , he added mentally, but figured that was too much of a wild card.

 

Joss’s face tightened. “Right. Leonard, I just don’t want her getting attached to transient...”

 

“She can’t get attached to a man she hasn’t met – and she won’t, not until I’m sure of where it’s goin’.”

 

“It didn’t take us long to be sure, did it?” she returned sharply, and McCoy’s jaw twitched.

 

“Yeah, well, I learned about rushin’ into things,” he snapped. “ _Jo_!” he hollered. “I gotta go, honey!”

 

“ _Noooo_ ,” the wail started up from the depths of the house, before an offensively-coloured cannonball hit his legs and clung. “No, Daddy!”

 

“I gotta go, sugar,” he said, prying her off and swinging her up for one last hug. “But I’ll see you on – count ’em?”

 

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve days,” she recited obediently, although her actual _understanding_ of numbers hadn’t progressed beyond about nine yet. “Friday! Can we go to the really big park Friday? With the donut place?”

 

“Sure we can. Be good for Mommy,” he said, receiving the customary loud kiss on each cheek before setting her down. “You gonna make me a picture in your art class this time?”

 

“Uh-huh! I’ll draw you a Spock!” she decided cheerfully.

 

“Should be interesting,” Joss said, a sudden smirk and _spark_ appearing, and McCoy chuckled, the irritation loosening.

 

“Should be,” he agreed. “See you in a fortnight, Joss.”

 

“Len,” she nodded, keeping hold of Jo’s hand until he’d latched the gate behind him – they’d learned their lesson about Jo’s tendency to attempt to suddenly launch herself after one parent or the other on handover days.

 

It hurt again, to look back at them, Joss simply standing while Jo strained on her arm and waved goodbye, and maybe the counting of the days wasn’t for Jo’s benefit at all. It still hurt to walk away from them, and McCoy wondered whether it would ever stop.

 

It was a long walk back to the car.


	19. Arc One, Part Eighteen

Spock overslept. That in itself was indicative of a problem; coupled with the distinct memory of waking repeatedly during the night, and the dull ache in his chest that persisted from the moment he moved, he gave up his day as a lost cause without much of a fight. He called in sick again to work, once again thinking after the call that Mr. April wasn’t entirely sure who he was, and settled back down for the morning.

 

He had not expected to sleep again, between the discomfort and the traffic noise outside, but he did.

 

It was, in fact, McCoy who woke him again, approaching one o’clock, with a text that sounded somehow obnoxiously cheerful in the quiet apartment even though there was no way that it _could_ , logically speaking. It took a moment of pure lethargy before Spock pushed away the weariness and the ache and forced himself out of bed to the coffee table in the next room, thumbing open the text and curling on the couch to read it. He almost wished Jim were there, with his oversized sweaters and his hugs.

 

_Free tonight?_

Ah, of course. It was Thursday, and they had not been able to see much of one another recently. Spock entertained the idea, briefly, but crushed it quickly. McCoy was not a stupid man, and would work it out very quickly, to see the sight of him now. Futile as the attempt was, Spock preferred to keep it to himself for a little longer.

 

_I am still unwell; perhaps the weekend would be preferable._

Perhaps it was testimony to how tired he was, but he had not thought – or remembered – of their differing routines during the working day, or specifically that he would normally be unable to reply to McCoy’s messages immediately.

 

As such, he should not have been surprised when his cell began to ring.

 

“What’s the matter?”

 

The brusque greeting – or lack thereof – and the ever-present fire in his voice was oddly relaxing, and Spock settled back to watch the birds swooping outside.

 

“Jim has seen fit to permit me to share in his suffering.”

 

“...He gave you his flu?”

 

“Apparently so.”

 

“ _Lovely_ ,” the word almost dripped with sarcasm. “But you’ve been off since last Friday; he was up and about again in a couple of days.”

 

“Apparently I am more susceptible,” Spock returned.

 

“Uh-huh.” There was something...off about the tone. Spock could not read expression well, but tone was less mysterious (perhaps due to his trilingual status) and while he could not identify the problem, it was _there_ nonetheless. “How bad?”

 

That was precisely when a loud, hacking cough decided to air itself, and it took some moments before Spock was able to get the spasm under control and take a deep breath.

 

“ _Ouch_ ,” McCoy said conversationally.

 

“Indeed,” Spock croaked irritably.

 

“Get some soothers down you and back to bed,” McCoy said briskly. “If you’re not feeling at least a little brighter by the mornin’, though...”

 

“I have already made an appointment to see my physician.” Just not for the flu, Spock thought grimly. He would not bother a doctor for the _flu_.

 

“Good,” the odd tone was slipping away. “I’ve got Jo this weekend, so I won’t see you until Monday night.”

 

“Very well.”

 

There was a sharp pause, then: “Well. See you then, I guess. Bye, Spock.”

 

It sounded oddly final, and Spock found himself frowning at the cell phone long after McCoy hung up. What, exactly, had he missed?

 

*

McCoy was _annoyed_. This was the fifth damn time he’d been fobbed off because Spock was feeling ‘somewhat unwell’, and the fifth time that Jim had looked utterly confused at the assertion and said he knew nothing about it. If McCoy didn’t know better – and to hell with it, he _didn’t_ know better, not for sure – he would say that Spock wanted to dump him but didn’t know _how_.

 

After the excuse that afternoon during his lunch hour, McCoy abandoned all pretence of going home to a night in front of the TV and a microwave meal; he drove home after shift with _intent_ , showering and changing in fast-forward, and was out again without even checking his mail, answering machine, or overdue bills.

 

He had calmed down a little by the time he pulled up outside the apartment block, but was still agitated with the annoyance as he stalked towards the elevators. At the last minute, he turned on his heel and began to jog up the stairs, hoping to burn off the anger and arrive calm. Sure, he wanted a goddamn explanation for constantly being blown off at every fucking turn, but he also didn’t want to go barging in shouting and screaming and get himself chucked out of Spock’s affairs for good either.

 

Communication skills – and to hell with it, he wasn’t really any good at those.

 

The jog up the stairs was soothing, and he caught his breath at the door before straightening his shirt, rolling his shoulders, and knocking, attempting to look – and feel – stoic and reasonable. It could be nothing. It _could_ be.

 

He heard a traitorous floorboard creak, and the shuffle of what sounded like socks on wood, and then the lock clunked and the door was cracked open, a security chain rattling across the thin slip of Spock’s face that was allowed to peer out – and _oh hell_ , McCoy had got it all wrong.

 

His anger completely died.

 

“You look like hell,” he blurted out, and Spock blinked at him.

 

He _did_. His hair was a mess, he was white as a sheet and looked to be clammy (though whether he was chilled or feverish, McCoy couldn’t tell) and his fingers were faintly trembling on the door where he held it open. His expression looked faintly glazed over, and McCoy’s medical training kicked in, wondering if he’d taken medication and how much of it.

 

“An acute observation,” Spock murmured – his voice was raspy and breathy, as though he had a violently sore throat. “Leonard, I apologise, but...”

 

“Look, you’re obviously pretty bad off, and I’m not gonna drag you out for a night on the town,” McCoy held up his hands. “Just let me come in and help you out for a bit. You’ve been off for over a week; I’m betting you haven’t been able to strip the bed or make up a decent meal.”

 

Spock’s face twitched. “I do not need...”

 

“You could do with it,” McCoy pushed. “C’mon. I’ll even throw in a free foot massage, and even my ex-wife still admits I do a mean foot massage.”

 

He knew he was going for the Achilles heel, pun entirely intended, and the struggle on Spock’s face became quite adamant.

 

“I...do not like having to rely on...”

 

“Think of it,” McCoy said, “as a quiet-night-in type of date. You never do those?”

 

“Not whilst ill.”

 

“First time for everything. And a foot massage. One for each foot.”

 

He was playing dirty pool, and when the door creaked closed again, he figured that he’d lost, but then the chain clanged free and Spock stepped back from the door to let him in.

 

“You been off work too?” he asked when Spock retreated to the couch and returned to a messy pile of blankets, stretching out on his back and closing his eyes.

 

“Yes,” he croaked. “I have not left the apartment in six days.”

 

McCoy winced. “You been sick?”

 

“No.”

 

“You feel up to eating?”

 

“No.”

 

“When d’you last eat?”

 

“Leonard, I am not a patient.”

 

“You probably oughta be,” he grumbled, leaning over the back of the couch to stroke back vaguely greasy hair and press his forehead. “Huh. You’re not too warm.”

 

“Does that mean that my temperature can be considered normal, or is it an odd phrasing for my temperature being too low?”

 

“It means you’re kinda warm, but I won’t be recommending a rectal thermometer,” he returned. “What do you think it is?”

 

“You are the doctor,” came the rather sharp reply, and McCoy raised his eyebrows.

 

“Moody son of a bitch when you’re sick, aren’t you,” he grumbled. “Symptoms, then. Sore throat?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You been coughing?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Any vomitin’ or diarrhoea?”

 

“No.”

 

“Headaches, dizziness, blurred vision?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“...Which ones?”

 

“Dizziness.”

 

McCoy grunted. “You feel lethargic?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Been sleeping a lot?”

 

“I am unsure; I have been asleep.”

 

McCoy snorted and grinned. “Sense of humour’s still goddamn useless. Any aching in your limbs at all?”

 

“No.”

 

“Any unusual swellings?”

 

“No.”

 

“You been feverish?”

 

“I do not think so.”

 

“Taken anything?”

 

“...Two aspirin.”

 

“Okay,” McCoy hummed. “Sounds like your average flu – you’re just gonna have to stick it out...”

 

“I have been.”

 

“...and if you wanna feel any better, accept a bit of a helping hand,” he continued blithely, still stroking his fingers over Spock’s forehead rhythmically. He noticed that Spock was definitely leaning into the touch, but refrained from comment. “What you got in the way of food in the place?”

 

“Very little, now.”

 

“Okay, tell you what,” McCoy said. “I’ll order in some basics and some takeout. I’ll go and strip down the bed because that’ll feel downright nasty after being ill this long, and then we’ll eat and I’ll give you a foot massage until your bones melt.”

 

Spock blinked up at him, still hazy but obviously processing something, before deciding: “As a doctor, you should be aware that that is medically impossible.”

 

“Smartass,” McCoy muttered.

 

An hour later found McCoy sat on one end of the couch, back against the arm and one leg folded under him, Spock’s left foot propped in his lap and beginning the first light rubs along the top of the arch. He’d put in for delivery, and had run a bundle of sheets down to the laundry before putting a new set on (and Jesus, Spock’s linen cupboard had a small country’s worth of fresh sheets) and now found himself getting more hands-on than he’d managed in almost two weeks with a man who was somehow still stupidly attractive even down with the flu.

 

The vantage point, and Spock’s half-asleep state, also allowed him to take stock, and he eyed the hitching rise and fall of the blanket and the faint wheeze occasionally audible in his breathing, and made a mental note to keep an eye on it. The dank fog and heavy smog that hung over San Francisco made pneumonia a more-common-than-appreciated concern in the clinics, and just because Spock was young didn’t mean he was immune. God only knew what his lungs were vulnerable to, being from abroad.

 

Otherwise, the vantage point was doing wonders for his mental map of Spock’s body. His bare arms were on full display over the blankets, and the narrow couch meant that the blanket was tucked fairly tightly around his hips and chest, outlining a long, sleek body and a decent musculature of a man that wasn’t Jim’s typical meathead type of a friend. McCoy hadn't had the chance to simply _look_ , between the conflicting work schedules and the frantic sex whenever Spock took his clothes off in front of him, and so he took the opportunity with glee.

 

Feet weren’t as attractive as the rest of him, but you couldn’t have everything.

 

He dug his thumbs into the sole and ran a groove down under the arch to the heel, watching the ripple of reaction roll into Spock’s spine and begin the process of leaking any remaining tension out of him.

 

“Y’know, you can just go to sleep,” he murmured, after a few minutes of watching Spock struggling to keep his eyes open.

 

“I would be a poor host...”

 

“Well I didn’t so much ask as push in,” McCoy shrugged. “Just go on. I’ll wake you up again when the food gets here, and then I’ll do the other foot too.”

 

The foot in his lap twitched, and he rubbed his thumb over the largest toe soothingly.

 

“You know, my momma used to have a word for people like you,” he said, pitching his voice low and dragging out the words slowly, focusing his attention on the circles he was rubbing into the gradually loosening tendons. “She used to say we were ‘stubstinate.’ Apparently it was the bastard child of stubborn and obstinate, and she used it on just about every member of the family every year when the fall colds came about. When my poppa got sick, she taught the whole hospital ward in Atlanta to call him stubstinate, and they’d write it on his progress chart – ‘Mr. McCoy is stubstinate as all hell’...”

 

He carried on talking for almost fifteen minutes, and when he next looked up, Spock was deeply asleep, eyes closed and every line of him relaxed.

 

McCoy smiled, and kept talking.


	20. Arc One, Part Nineteen

It was the fifth cancellation in as many weeks, and if he hadn’t seen for himself that there really was something wrong, he would have put it down to Spock not knowing how to get shot of him and moved on. But the constant coughing, the raspiness to his voice whenever they did manage to speak, and that evening sat on his couch digging a foot massage into the arches of his feet had McCoy...concerned.

 

He was a doctor, and the alarm bells were ringing.

 

He also wasn’t stupid. He’d noticed that Spock hadn’t been all too happy at his career, and while he had no idea _why_ (hell, maybe the guy was scared of needles, who knew?) he did have the distinct impression that showing up with a general textbook, a stethoscope and a list of questions wouldn’t go down very well. Hell, he’d probably get the door slammed in his face.

 

And maybe it was paranoia, but...

 

But he hadn’t been so persistently _ill_ – and fuck his assurances, nobody sounded like that except sick people and chronic smokers, and he definitely wasn’t the latter – in April. He’d been fine in April. It was only this last month or so, with that slow, inching tide of cancellations and rearrangements, the odd quick visit accompanied with a white face and an echoing cough.

 

He was _ill_ , damnit, and McCoy was stuck between a rock and a hard place, a butterfly in the middle of a double-glazed window.

 

He was under no illusion that pressing for answers would get him anywhere. Spock was a master at evading answering questions that he didn’t like, McCoy was coming to realise, and he quite obviously didn’t like McCoy _asking_. From asking Jim, it was quite apparent that even Jim didn’t know what was going on, which meant that McCoy _certainly_ wouldn’t be able to squirm it out of him anytime soon.

 

Which meant it was a touchy subject, and touchy subjects in patients typically revolved around certain _types_ of sickness...but that didn’t match up either. For _that_...he would be worse. He was physically fit, he was – when not obviously ill – perfectly capable, and there was no real sign of a constant deterioration.

 

 _At the moment_ , McCoy’s medical training whispered, and he crushed that thought ruthlessly. He had to be on the wrong track here. He _had_ to be – the pieces didn’t fit. The pieces just didn’t damn well fit. But for the life of him, he couldn’t work out what the _right_ track was.

 

McCoy, like many medical professionals, had never quite broken the habit of keeping one’s medical textbooks, even long after he would ever have to know anything about clinical psychology, orthopaedic surgery, or the hundred and six uses of twenty-six different drugs that were no longer in production. And for every cancelled date, he had spent the time otherwise lost perusing them, checking and rechecking symptoms lists, wondering what was and what was not indicative of...whatever Spock had.

 

Because he had _something_ , McCoy was damn sure of it.

 

The problem was...there were too many pieces missing. What did McCoy have, really? That he seemed to experienced periodic spells of whatever it was? That applied to just about every illness in the goddamn book. It was something to do with his cardiovascular system or his respiratory system, he could guess, but that didn’t narrow the field much either, particularly given that it didn’t seem to impair his fitness (or if it did, the man was a potential Olympic athlete). He had never glimpsed any medication in Spock’s apartment, not even in the bathroom cabinet, and he would have noticed surgical scars, and there weren’t any. (Bar an appendectomy scar, but that didn’t count.)

 

His first guess had been a lung disorder like tuberculosis or bronchitis or, hell, even asthma, but that didn’t seem to fit. He didn’t seem to be looking for any impact from his surroundings, like a bar or a smoggy night would give him, and given his martial arts training and the gym membership card in his wallet, he put too much stress on his lungs for them to be suffering from any such problem. In any case, the resulting impact – the long weeks of periodic, secretive _sickness_ – were too severe for milder problems like recovering pneumonia, and too mild for severe illnesses like tuberculosis.

 

The bruising from his training had pulled up anaemia in his mind, but again, the physical fitness didn’t allow for it, nor did it explain the hoarse throat or coughing. Dietary anaemia was out – Spock was too smart, and had been a vegetarian too long, for that to be a serious consideration; dysfunctional anaemia was out for the mismatching symptoms.

 

Immune-suppressing disorders – or drugs – were the next port of call, and McCoy had resolutely pushed away the red flag of a bisexual man with a lowered immune system. Spock kept his cards close to his chest, but not _that_ close. He would have informed McCoy of _that_ , he was certain. But leaving it aside, there were plenty of disorders, and drugs for other disorders, that crippled the immune system and left one vulnerable. It would explain the vulnerability to colds – but McCoy could not think of an illness that matched that would be treated with such drugs, and – again – he had not seen any in the apartment.

 

And then, medical training or no, one’s mind naturally moved...higher.

 

The fact was, Spock’s psychological symptoms _were_ matching things McCoy had seen before: the secrecy, the reluctance to talk about it, the active avoidance of said talking about it, the persistent assurance that nothing was wrong whilst simultaneously refusing to enlighten him...

 

He saw it every day in the hospital, and it almost inevitably lined up with the _big ones_. The cancers, the lumps and bumps, the degenerative disorders, the terminal diseases and the fatal disorders. The life-destroying things that even doctors shied away from. And given that cancer _alone_ could produce almost any symptom once cared to name, never mind more specific disorders – cystic fibrosis, emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis – he would not, without Spock’s assistance, be able to pin anything down. Or discount anything.

 

Doctor or not, McCoy was only human – and while the doctor murmured that he wasn’t that ill and it was just the odd day here and there, the _human_ in him looked harder. And didn’t like what he saw.

 

*

By the Saturday morning, the weight on Spock’s chest was easing, the cough beginning to  dissolve, and he felt up to airing out the apartment and running the backlog of laundry through. It was on one such trip between the building basement and the front door that he ran into Jim on the stairs, looking idly offensive in hole-pocked jeans and a shirt that had seen better centuries.

 

“Gimme,” and the laundry basket was swept out of his grip, leaving Spock free to locate his keys again and lead the way up the final flight of stairs. “You feeling better then?”

 

So he _had_ been talking to McCoy.

 

“I am.”

 

“Good,” Jim kicked the back of his calf lightly as they paused at the door. “ _Was_ it my flu?”

 

“A close imitation. I did not require a small forest in tissues.”

 

“So, less disgusting,” Jim said. “Story of my life,” he added, dropping the basket on the floor and slotting the chain over behind him. “You are feeling better, though?”

 

“Indeed. I am returning to work on Monday.”

 

“Good,” Jim paused. “Bones thinks you’ve been ill a lot lately. Like...ducking out of dates and things.”

 

“That is because I have been,” Spock replied flatly.

 

Jim paused again, shifting from foot to foot. Spock knew the look. It was the look of a Jim that knew he was about to walk out over Lake Michigan in a warm February.

 

“With what?” he blurted out.

 

Spock blinked.

 

“Why have...what’s wrong?”

 

“I have told you...”

 

“Yeah, but – you haven’t,” Jim said. “You couldn’t have had my flu the week before. Or all those days in May you said you weren’t feeling well. And you’re always taking time off sick...”

 

Spock felt the faint beginnings of a headache, and leaned back against the kitchen counter, folding his arms over his chest. He did not need Jim to remind him of the liberties he was taking with work; Mr. April managed to do that quite efficiently by himself.

 

“Spock,” Jim had that _look_ on his face. “I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but...it’s...I’m worried.”

 

Spock believed that this was called emotional blackmail.

 

“This isn’t...when you were in hospital a couple of years ago. Right? It’s not _that_ again?”

 

Spock was brought up short. Following Jim’s mental processes was tricky at the best of times, but this – Jim had not known why Spock had been hospitalised that winter, merely that he had been unable to return to work for over a month. He had refused to share the details with the personnel department, and had not told Jim of the circumstances since. He did not like to air his proverbial dirty laundry in public, and so he was certain – _certain_ – that Jim did not know.

 

“Spock?”

 

“Jim,” Spock said slowly, “you have formulated a theory.”

 

Jim pulled a face. “Well. Yeah. You get a _doctor_ start poking at a problem, your brain tends to come up with ideas, you know what I mean?”

 

“And what is your idea?”

 

Looking at him, standing there looking almost small and lost in Spock’s apartment, and extrapolating from the theories of others in the past, and the American – not even American, the _Western_ – obsession with it, Spock could take a reasonable guess at what Jim’s idea, drawn from a lack of data and little to no medical knowledge, was.

 

Jim took a deep breath.

 

“Ji-?”

 

“Do you have cancer?”

 

Spock’s guess was correct.

 

“No,” he said flatly.

 

Jim was _watching_ , his eyes darting over his face, the blue suddenly alien and intense. The scrutiny was _sharp_ in a way that Jim typically was not, before flitting away again. He licked his lower lip and said, “You’re being straight with me?”

 

“ _Yes_ , Jim.”

 

“You’re...?” Jim took a hesitant step.

 

“Jim. I do not, nor have I ever had, any form of cancer,” Spock said firmly. “It does not even appear in my family history, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. I do not have cancer.”

 

A moment later, Jim’s arms were around his shoulders, the faint hint of engine oil lingering somewhere in his fair hair, and the sharp sting of sweat from the heat outside and the general smell of a young man without much care about _being_ a young man.

 

“Good,” Jim mumbled in the vicinity of Spock’s shoulder, before he backed up with a cough and a clap to Spock’s upper arm. “So – it’s nothing to do with that winter?”

 

“I have merely been unfortunate.”

 

“Okay,” Jim said, seeming to subside a little. “Okay. You would – Spock. You’d tell me, right? If it was something serious. You’d tell me.”

 

“Yes, Jim, I would tell you.”

 

He did not like lying to him – but in this instance, it was...preferable.


	21. Arc One, Part Twenty

McCoy wasn’t prone to celebrating it, and so the twenty-second of August came and almost went without a murmur. It was a Wednesday, and therefore without Jo; it was a Wednesday, stapling him to his usual late-afternoon shift, and his colleagues’ lack of knowledge on the matter meant that it went largely unheralded.

 

It was almost over when he pulled back up in the driveway at just after seven o’clock – to find a motorbike propped against the garage door.

 

Spock was leaning against the front door, a splatter of inky clothing against the white door and his white skin, remaining immobile but for the faint stir of equally dark eyes until McCoy’s shoe creaked the boards of the steps, and then his spine rolled him off the plastic and forward into a swift kiss.

 

“Hey,” McCoy ran his hands down the bare biceps; the leather jacket was abandoned on the boards, but the pants and boots kept him flushed to the touch, overheated in the August sunlight. “What brings you here?”

 

Spock nudged the bag at their feet with his boot. “You wished to try _tonkatsu_.”

 

“You cookin’?”

 

“Apparently,” Spock allowed, the lower part of his spine arching very slightly into McCoy’s hand as he ran his fingers around the belt and rested his palm in the small of his back.

 

“Well, I ain’t gonna say no to that,” McCoy said, and squinted as he slotted his key in the lock. “Unless this involves any raw fish.”

 

“It does not,” Spock said evenly, hefting the bag over his shoulder easily and settling on the stairs to unzip and remove his boots. McCoy considered spreading him out and taking advantage then and there, but figured that if he did, nothing would actually get done. Except Spock. Instead, he toed off his own shoes and poked at the bag.

 

“I hope you brought a change of clothes,” he said.

 

Spock looked up at him from under his eyebrows. “I did.”

 

McCoy grinned, and removed himself from temptation, by retreating to the kitchen.

 

McCoy kept a clean kitchen; the window faced west, and so the early evening sun was pouring in, burning the tiles with fierce glory. It blasted that pale, even texture of Spock’s skin into flawless _light_ when he followed, bag on his shoulder again, and paused in the doorway, he looked – quite suddenly – like simultaneous brilliance and devastation. The archangel with the flaming sword; a terrible kind of beauty that would blind a man.

 

McCoy felt...more than just a man, looking at him.

 

“Thank _God_ you brought a change of clothes,” he said, and swept an arm out to indicate the kitchen. “Use whatever you need. I can’t promise I got anythin’ fancy.”

 

“I am quite used to the inadequacies of the American kitchen,” Spock returned, and God kept some damn sarcastic angels.

 

Neither McCoy nor Jocelyn had been prone to cooking; McCoy _could_ cook, but he didn’t enjoy it. From the moment that Spock found the pans, it was quite plain that if he did not _enjoy_ it, he at least gained more pleasure from it than McCoy – and he was, with the practised hands picking out appropriate knives and the long, sweeping motions without a twitch of wasted energy, much more used to doing it.

 

McCoy largely left him to it; the small television set on the end of the too-large kitchen table provided a news reel that kept him occupied during the hiss and devotion of frying the...whatever he’d said he was making...and McCoy rose again to catch him by the hips and kiss whatever was available (lips, neck, shoulders, even hands once or twice) as he prepared for whatever came next.

 

That strange smell of _foreign_ began to creep into the air, and something sharp snapped in his chest – home. The smell was simultaneously familiar and not, and his kitchen seemed warmer for it. The quiet that came over them – not speaking, but comfortable; not interacting much save for the odd caught kiss and the few exchanged glances of something undefinable – was...

 

McCoy languished in the kitchen chair, and felt _happy_.

 

When the _whatever_ was served, McCoy didn’t have a clue. He couldn’t remember expressing the curiosity (fuck it, he could have been blowing hot air to try and impress Spock, because, hell, why not?) and he definitely couldn’t pronounce the name of it, not when Spock spat out Japanese words and phrases like they were his mother tongue (because oh yeah, they _were_ ) but...

 

Whatever it was, it smelled damn good.

 

Spock was evil, as well. There were side dishes – “Why do you need three types of rice?” – and little bowls of things that looked like meat-filled pastries, and a tall glass of clear liquid that, just for its innocence, was probably sinister and evil and Communist, or whatever system the Japanese had. And when Spock sank into the seat opposite, his bare feet sliding across the tiles to cup around McCoy’s ankles, looking somehow peaceful without having changed his expression at all...

 

McCoy would have eaten that food if it had been poisoned, and that more than anything said just about how damn suckered he really was.

 

Thing was...it was damn good.

 

The tonky-whatsit was sat on a bed of soft rice, and McCoy layered the rest with the stickier variety between mouthfuls, obnoxiously sticking to the American knife and fork, thank you very much, while watching the delicate, skilled flex of Spock’s fingers around the chopsticks and his own rice and a few of the weird pastry things. He ate almost daintily, mouthfuls barely big enough to require chewing, and McCoy found himself tracking the motions of the chopsticks idly.

 

“And you’ve been in the US how long?”

 

“Many years.”

 

“And you still make it this good? Or is Chinese food...”

 

“Japanese.”

 

“...actually even better and you’re bettin’ I won’t know the difference.”

 

Spock paused. “Must I choose an option?”

 

McCoy snorted. “This _is_ good, by the way. What is it?”

 

“Tonkatsu.”

 

“Tonky-what?”

 

“Tonkatsu.”

 

“...Whatever. You not having it?”

 

“It is meat, Leonard. This,” Spock indicated the pastry thing, “is vegetarian gyoza.” He paused. “I concede that gyoza were originally Chinese.”

 

“Told you,” McCoy grinned. “Chinatown. Ow!”

 

Spock retracted his foot from the sharp blow he’d aimed for McCoy’s shin.

 

“Son of a bitch,” McCoy grumbled. “No wonder you don’t weigh anythin’, if that’s all you eat.”

 

Spock ignored him. “Do you like potato-based products?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Then I suggest you try korokke, at some point. There are no particularly good Japanese restaurants that are not extortionate in price, so...”

 

“You offerin’ to cook again?” McCoy asked, stealing the last of the sticky rice. “If it’s like this all the time, I ain’t saying no.”

 

“...I believe you would were I to attempt meatloaf.”

 

“Okay, I’ll handle the meatloaf,” McCoy allowed, sliding his foot to stroke over the top of Spock’s toes. “What is that, anyway?” he added as he pushed his emptied plate aside. “Go-what?”

 

“Gyoza. It is...” Spock searched thoughtfully. “I cannot think of the English word, or equivalent. These are diced and minced vegetables wrapped in dough packages and fried.”

 

“Huh,” McCoy said, reaching into the bowl and stabbing one with his fork. “Sounds kinda...” he chewed on it, and Spock watched him, still slowly working through his rice, “...eh. It’s okay, I guess.”

 

“‘You guess’?”

 

“Hey, it’s okay, just...not a whole lotta flavour,” he shrugged. “That tonky, though...”

 

Spock popped another half-gyoza into his mouth and rose fluidly from the table, stepping around it to – kiss him, digging his fingers into McCoy’s hair and pushing against his mouth until he parted his lips and had the gyoza pushed determinedly under his tongue. Spock retreated then, to pluck and nip at his lips while he chewed, and straightened only when he swallowed, suddenly dry-mouthed.

 

“Is that an improvement?”

 

McCoy pushed his chair back, slid the bowl across the table, and yanked on Spock’s hip until he more or less fell onto McCoy’s thighs.

 

“You’re a scientist,” he said, offering the bowl. “You gotta repeat the experiment a few times before the results are reliable.”

 

*

 

McCoy idly stroked himself as Spock stripped and crawled up the bed over him, eventually dislodging his busy hand to drop his knees either side of McCoy’s waist and straddle him, leaning down for a kiss that was surprisingly chaste given that, you know, he was naked as Adam and twice as filthy.

 

It was a novel position. McCoy had literally never had sex on his back, and being able to rake his fingernails down that long spine was... _fascinating_ , especially with the freer ripple to Spock’s responsive wriggle. Finally, as well, Spock’s thing about digging his fingers into McCoy’s hair was explained: forcing him to open up to the kisses was hard without the pillow (sheets, mattress, floor...) anchoring his head, and McCoy tugged on handfuls of that dark hair to keep him in place.

 

“You’re teasin’ me,” he accused around Spock’s tongue, and received a soft hum and a vague tightening of Spock’s thighs around his waist. “You gonna do this or just use me as a chair all evenin’, huh?”

 

Spock licked another kiss out of his mouth before straightening up, dignified as a horserider, and rocking his hips until McCoy’s cock brushed against that God-given ass. If Spock was any lighter, the electric shock up McCoy’s spine would have thrown him off.

 

“Perhaps I should.”

 

“Perhaps you should get the fuck on with it,” McCoy growled.

 

When Spock rose up onto his knees, McCoy knew he was in trouble – and when he reached back to begin preparing himself, he mentally erased the word ‘trouble’ and replaced it with ‘Hell.’

 

“Oh my fucking Christ.”

 

The ripple of muscle in those thighs as he rocked gently with his own motions, the expression torn between bliss and concentration on his face, the angry jut of his own cock just _daring_ McCoy to put an end to this teasing crap and _fuck him_...

 

He rose up, grabbing onto those thighs and digging his fingers in as he bit down _hard_ on Spock’s lower lip, resuming those fierce, carnal kisses that had punctuated just about every sexual encounter to date – and was rudely reintroduced to the mattress, slammed back down with Spock’s hands on his shoulders, his mouth dragging one last kiss from McCoy’s lips before he hissed, “ _Behave_ ,” into his ear and sat back up.

 

“Behave?”

 

“Yes,” Spock said, rising back up onto his knees, and resuming his task with a single-minded focus that would have been admirable if _he wasn’t delaying getting fucked_.

 

McCoy moved. Fast.

 

In half a second, he reared up, hands seizing a shoulder and a hip, and twisted to slam Spock down into the mattress with a jarring thump, reversing their positions with the effortless energy of a man very much used to getting what he wanted in bed – and kept them there, stealing what was left of Spock’s air with a brutal kiss, one hand scrabbling for the abandoned tube of lubricant on the bedside table and the other pinning Spock’s hip firmly to the bed.

 

“You oughta know by now,” he snarled, pressing two slick fingers into Spock and biting at his jaw when he hissed, “I don’t _behave_ in bed.”

 

“O-obviously,” Spock stuttered, arching and hissing when McCoy twisted his hand and added his ring finger, then shivering and twisting again when a sharp bite momentarily compressed his jugular and cut off a full three seconds of air.

 

“ _Behave_ ,” McCoy mocked, and let go, reaching for the condom.

 

Spock took a precious second to regain some breath, before flying up to slam their mouths – and tongues, and teeth, and a sharp tang of _blood_ – together in another bruising kiss, swallowing the growl and biting sharply on McCoy’s lip in revenge before a broad hand slammed into his chest and pinned him back down, rising warningly to clasp loosely around his throat.

 

“I said _behave_.”

 

Spock lifted his chin, narrowing his eyes. “I do not behave in bed,” he returned.

 

McCoy _smirked_.

 

“Good,” he said, and moved.

 

One hand wrapped into Spock’s hair, his mouth wrapping about his earlobe and _pulling_ in a perfect counterpoint to the sharp thrust of his hips and the sudden burn of a fast, graceless fuck. The rhythm was _punishing_ , hard and fast and shocking in its strength, the headboard slamming against the wall ruthlessly, and Spock’s senses torn between the mouth savaging his own, and the electrifying, deadly shock of pleasure slamming up his spine and shuddering down his thighs. McCoy’s dominance was unquestionable, his power written in his muscles and his teeth and the rasp of stubble on Spock’s jaw, reminding-reminding-reminding, and Spock heard his _own_ growl around that fighting tongue and was bitten for the cheek. He was pinned, shaken, rattled out of a cage, a captive to this sheer, raw fire of a man – and he clawed for it, dug his fingers into skin and hair, clinging to keep it, rearing up into the heat and the allure of him, and –

 

He burst at the seams. Orgasm was a shock, and too soon, and went on forever, ripping the strength from his muscles and the coherence from his mind. Caught by the mattress, and paper rattling helpless in the rhythm, he gasped through mindlessness and registered nothing of the burn and the stillness until the headboard stopped sounding and a long, deep groan hammered through his ear.

 

“ _Hell_ almighty.”

 

McCoy was shaking; his biceps shivered, and he dropped onto Spock’s chest too heavily, his ribs heaving. The fingers of his left hand stroked clumsily over Spock’s cheek for a moment, the kiss tasting metallic, and then he was up, tying off the condom and reaching for the wet wipes.

 

“I don’t think I’m going to get it up for a week,” he slurred, kissing Spock’s hip when he tried to twitch away from the cloth, his nerves too raw for it. “You look...hell. You’re hell. On legs.”

 

Spock merely reached to stroke his wrist; when the cloth was discarded, he tugged until McCoy stretched out beside him and turned his head for a long, soothing kiss. His lips hurt. He would look...battered in the morning.

 

“Sex on legs,” McCoy corrected, beginning to manhandle him into McCoy’s favoured post-coital position: spooning. “That’s what I was trying to say. Sex on legs.”

 

Spock hummed, shifting until a decent three inches separated their lower bodies, but tolerating McCoy’s usual tendency to remain excessively tactile for a good twenty minutes after sex. He was, for the moment, too raw to indulge sufficiently.

 

“Fuck,” McCoy breathed into the back of his head. “I think I’m broken.”

 

“As am I,” Spock murmured, scrunching his shoulder until McCoy kissed the developing bruise. “Sleep, Leonard.”

 

“ _Way_ aheada ya, darlin’,” came the slurred response, and his fingers twitched once on Spock’s chest.

 

Into the dying light of the bedroom, Spock spoke three further words, just as McCoy had found the first creeping tendrils of sleep.

 

“Happy birthday, Leonard.”

 

And suddenly McCoy was wide awake.

 

*

 

McCoy _ached_.

 

Prising himself from the bed had never been so damn hard. Not only had his brain anchored itself into a caveman mode of ‘must sleep completely wrapped around victim from last night’, but he _ached_. His thighs, hips, bi- and triceps, and back were all letting him know that while his dick, balls and general libido were thrilled with him, _they_ weren’t.

 

Still, like all men after a really good fuck, it didn’t dampen his mood in the slightest.

 

His stomach was being the most vocal part of his entire body, so he walked straight into the kitchen to switch the coffee machine on and get a pan going for porridge. He’d just gotten spectacularly laid. Fat be damned; porridge was _deserved_.

 

True to form, the coffee machine had just clicked over when the bedroom door creaked.

 

Preoccupied with the porridge, McCoy hummed a greeting and listened to the sleepy sounds of socked feet on the tiles and the clatter of mugs with half an ear, only turning to actually look at Spock at all when he came to rinse out the drained mug again – and stopped.

 

“My God, man, your _face_!”

 

Spock looked, frankly, like he’d been punched in the mouth – or just beaten up, as the damage wasn’t limited to his face alone. His lips were still swollen, the bottom one split in two places, and a bruise had welled up on his jaw from McCoy’s bite. The rash – presumably from McCoy’s stubble – covered the right side of his jaw and neck, where four more blackened patches were rising up, stark against the pale skin. There were finger-bruises in his upper left arm, a trail of deep bites over his pectorals, and a parallel trail of three long scratches down his chest. McCoy didn’t doubt there would be more scratches on his back and hips if he cared to look.

 

McCoy laughed, and caught Spock’s hips in his hands when he stepped forward for a chaste kiss, sharp with coffee and hesitant with soreness. “Mm. Bet your Neil never made you feel quite like that.”

 

“Indeed not,” Spock murmured.

 

“Told you I don’t behave in bed,” McCoy squeezed his hips and let go to remove the pan from the stove. “C’mon. Breakfast, then I’ll run you home before Jim comes barging in here to have another poke at my sex life.”

 

Spock looked as though he was going to ask, but apparently thought better of it and turned to retrieve cutlery, as casually as though he lived here, and McCoy didn’t much mind the thought.

 

“How did you know it was my birthday yesterday?” he asked as they took their bowls to the table. They sat opposite, their socked feet intertwined on the foot, an after-effect of the life-affirming sex of the night before. He grinned to himself at Spock’s stiff posture.

 

“Your driving license.”

 

“...Which I keep in my wallet,” McCoy said slowly.

 

“Yes. And I looked,” Spock returned matter-of-factly.

 

“...Right. So when’s yours?”

 

Spock glanced up, spoon in his mouth, and blinked innocently. “You will simply have to find out, Leonard.”


	22. Arc One, Part Twenty-One

McCoy’s good mood didn’t last.

 

It wasn’t like he got to see a whole lot of Spock anyway, between work and Jo and whatever martial art it was that Spock did on Tuesday nights that left him with completely black shins and bruised ribs (McCoy suspected kickboxing, but didn’t dare ask) so he didn’t even really notice when a week slid by after his birthday without a sound.

 

He did notice, however, when Spock walked into _Harry’s_ the following Monday with a wrist brace on.

 

“What in the hell happened to you?!” he exclaimed, and a flash of irritation crossed Spock’s face. Which was explained when Jim looked up, swore, and abandoned the game.

 

“What the fuck?!” Jim said.

 

“There was an accident at work, nothing more,” Spock said, sidestepping them both.

 

“What’d you do to it?”

 

“A hairline fracture to one of the minor bones. I am to wear the brace for two weeks.”

 

McCoy nodded, satisfied with the answer. Wrists weren’t exactly made of titanium. He’d fractured his own more than once, and Joss hadn’t managed a year yet without fucking up one or the other of them.

 

“How’d you do it?” Jim prodded.

 

And _that_ was when McCoy lost his good mood – because Spock, far from shrugging off the incident as he had the injury itself, evaded the question.

 

“It is not important. Do either of you require another drink?”

 

“Uh-uh-uh,” Jim said, catching his sleeve. “What happened?”

 

“Nothing of importance,” Spock – snapped, and Jim recoiled slightly, scowling. McCoy watched silently.

 

“I’m just asking how you busted your wrist at _work_ ,” Jim snapped back.

 

“Why is it important?”

 

“Because I don’t see how you _can_ ,” Jim snapped. “Burns and cuts and shit, sure, but a fractured _wrist_? What, you genetically engineer a rat the size of a dog and decide to play football with it or something?”

 

“You are being ridiculous.”

 

“And you’re doing _this_ again!” Jim thumped down his bottle angrily, and McCoy was struck with the distinct feeling that he’d missed something, like an actor coming into the scene too late. “Stop fucking shutting me out and _tell me_!”

 

Spock’s face _closed_. Every muscle went into a strange freeze-frame; it was eerie. Quite suddenly, any headway McCoy had made in reading the man’s peculiar lack of expression was destroyed, and he looked utterly _blank_.

 

“You just can’t do it, can you?” Jim demanded bitterly. “You just can’t be straight with me, not about anything more important than your favourite fucking colour.”

 

McCoy had _definitely_ missed something.

 

“It,” Spock said slowly, “is nothing.”

 

“Yeah, because I call a whole month in hospital _nothing_ ,” Jim sneered.

 

“Jim!” Spock snapped.

 

“He’s going to find out anyway!” Jim shouted, and by this point, half the bar was staring at them. “You gonna try and keep that a secret too, or is it just your special treatment for me?!”

 

“Oi!” the bartender – an enormous wall of meat and facial hair – shouted. “Take your domestic outside!”

 

Jim’s face twisted – when the kid was angry, it was an ugly sight – and turned on his heel, storming out of the bar in a rage. Gaila blinked over the bar at them, eyes wide under her elaborate hairstyle, and Spock slowly turned back to McCoy.

 

“I...apologise for that.”

 

“Don’t sweat it,” McCoy shook his head. “Wanna get  outta here? I got a TV and a couple of cold ones in the fridge.”

 

Spock hesitated, then nodded. “That would be...appreciated.”

 

McCoy didn’t touch the topic for the entire walk home, keeping an arm slung low around Spock’s hips and watching a couple of helicopters playing some bizarre game with their searchlights. It was not until they turned the corner into Tenth Avenue that McCoy said, “What was that, then? I feel like...I missed somethin’.”

 

“Jim and I...had a disagreement last week.”

 

“Uh-huh,” McCoy said. “About what?”

 

“He believes that I should share more than I am comfortable with, on account of his being my friend.”

 

“I got the impression it was a particular somethin’,” McCoy said, fumbling for his keys. Spock’s eyes were hole punches in paper under the dim glow of his porch light.

 

“It is.”

 

“A whole month in hospital?”

 

“Years ago.”

 

McCoy sighed. He was fighting to keep his cool. “You’re not gonna tell me either, are you?”

 

Spock’s shoulders tensed. “I am...not comfortable with...”

 

“Well. When you’re ready to talk about it, you know where to find me,” McCoy said, although he suspected if it got Jim so riled, it would not be so easy as that. “Is it something that I should be worried about?”

 

“No.”

 

“So why’s Jim so worked up?”

 

“He believes it _is_ something to concern himself with.”

 

“Your health,” McCoy said flatly.

 

“Indeed.”

 

“I gotta say, Spock – just put your shoes anywhere, I don’t care – that if I had a friend I thought was ill and not tellin’ me, I’d be pretty het up too.”

 

“He refuses to trust my judgement on the matter,” Spock said.

 

“So do I,” McCoy grumbled. “ _Never_ trust a patient’s judgement.”

 

“Do you not do so to evaluate their symptoms?”

 

McCoy shrugged. “Maybe. But handlin’ it? Hell no. Patients’d kill themselves with placebos if they could. Catch.”

 

Spock plucked the bottle out of the air almost casually. “Is that possible?”

 

“Probably,” McCoy said. “Look, Spock, I’ll be honest with you. I want to know what’s goin’ on. Your immune system is definitely weaker than it should be, given how healthy you are on diet and exercise, and you can’t tell me you’re fine because I’m not stupid. All I need to know is what kind of thing we’re talking about – are we talkin’ an illness that’s goin’ to get worse, or a condition that’s always going to stay pretty much steady?”

 

“The latter,” Spock said flatly.

 

“Okay,” McCoy said. “Right. That’s a start. And in terms of treatment?”

 

“I am handling it.”

 

McCoy eyed him suspiciously. “Huh. I feel like that was too damn easy.”

 

Spock located the bottle opener on the counter and ignored him.

 

“Well,” McCoy said slowly. “I’ll break my own rule and trust you. If you don’t feel like discussing it, that’s your issue, but – you should at least tell Jim that much.”

 

“I have. He does not believe me.”

 

McCoy snorted. “Well, you better get comfortable with sharing, hadn’t you?”

 

Spock raised an eyebrow.

 

“Yeah, yeah, and pigs fly. C’mon. I’ll give you the tour, then we’ll see what’s on the idiot box for the evenin’.”

 

“Baseball.”

 

“God save us all.”

 

*

 

Life had this manner in which it would allow one to see an incoming disaster and yet give no palatable option for avoiding said disaster. And so Spock stood with this: he knew, as surely as he knew his own name and address, that McCoy was going to do one of two things. He would either force the issue until Spock told him simply to alleviate the pressure, or he would gather enough data to draw the correct conclusion on his own.

 

And then...

 

Spock knew McCoy well enough to know by now that for all his assertions to the contrary – all the respect for Spock’s privacy, all the concerted effort not to intervene – he would not be pleased. There would be arguments. Whether he would consider it severe enough to warrant an end to the relationship, Spock could not accurately judge, but it was also not an idea that came, as Jim put it, from left field.

 

Spock was neither oblivious nor blind. He knew why he had not informed McCoy – or Jim, for that matter – from the start. He knew that it likely indicated some form of mental health, or at least esteem, issues, but the facts were the facts. His sense of privacy, and his experience of treatment from people who _did_ know, combined to form a preference for nobody knowing at all. As entirely nobody was impossible – his physician, for example, or his own family – then at least keeping the number of those informed as low as possible would limit the damage.

 

And it _was_ damage.

 

He had told people before. He had told T’Pring, and was immediately shifted in her mind to the status of a medical experiment – she prodded and poked at it from every angle until he came to hate any reference she made to it, and it eventually drove them apart. And when Nyota had found out – he had not outright _told_ her, but he had not yet been in quite such a firm habit of hiding it, and she had worked out the correct answer early on – her pretty face had been woven into pity and grating sympathy that he simply hadn’t wanted. It was not deserving of _sympathy_ , and her attempts to shield him from it – and the world around it – had been salt over a raw wound. He had told Neil when they had moved in together, and in the end, it had destroyed them as well.

 

When people found out...

 

To put it simply, they left. They could not, and would not, handle a partner with this kind of impairment. It was a strain on any relationships he attempted to uphold; eventually, it became the burden that forced them away from him again, and left him alone. It forced itself to be the one thing he could not afford to allow anyone to assist him with, because then that assistance (if it were offered at all) became short-lived and fleeting.

 

His father, T’Pring, Nyota, Neil – and while it was, he knew, inevitable that McCoy would realise, he was loathe to add his name to the list. Somewhere along the line, this relationship that he had never meant to have had become important to him, and even as he could see the end rising up before him like an approaching wall on a long, flat road...he could not avoid it, and he fought to keep what precious little time they had left to himself.

 

Because McCoy _would_ find out, and for a while, he _would_ try to help – and then, as it had every time before and would every time after, he would fail. And then he would decide that it was too much to handle, too much trouble, too much to ask, and he would walk away.

 

Spock was not a romantic; he was a realist. He would survive McCoy’s departure. He would return to his apartment and his lonely life and eventually, he would move on and the raw hurt would fade – but the scar wouldn’t. Another name to add to the list, and another reason to know that he was crippled by his own body and that it would never, never let him go. He would never walk free of it.

 

Could he be blamed, then, for clinging to the slipping traces of that freedom?

 

*

 

And then McCoy worked it out, and everything - changed.


	23. Arc One, Part Twenty-Two

One day, in the middle of September and the rusty colour of the parks with Jo jumping in puddles, he worked it out. All of the nagging and worrying, plucking and pulling at the mystery of Spock’s _whatever_ (illness, problem, disability, _thing_ ) suddenly fell into place like God-blessed (cursed?) cards – and thanks to Jim Kirk, of all people.

 

He had been turning it over in his head, the problem lingering constantly at the back of his mind, for a solid three weeks before he came home one Wednesday afternoon, late as usual from the next nutjob to threaten suicide in the middle of the emergency room, to find Jim sitting on his porch steps, hands over his ribs, a pout on his cracked lips and a medical problem of his own.

 

“I think I busted a rib,” he said. “It fucking _hurts_.”

 

“You could have gone to a doctor on duty, you know. One actually _paid_ to listen to you whine,” McCoy pointed out, unlocking the door and showing him in without much protest. Jim might be melodramatic, but he wasn’t generally a hypochondriac.

 

“I pay taxes, so I pay you.”

 

“You dodge your taxes, and pay far less of my wages than you should,” McCoy said. “In the kitchen, and get your shirt off.”

 

“Ooh, kinky. Is that how you talk Spock into things?”

 

“I don’t have to, unlike some people in here,” McCoy returned, locking up and kicking off his shoes before following, propping his briefcase on the table and turning around to eye Jim’s freshly-bared ribcage – and whistled. “Ouch.”

 

There were no obvious swellings or depressions in the surface of Jim’s torso, but the bruise was immense, spreading cleanly over the three lowest ribs on his left and stopping just shy of his hipbone to the south, and his nipple to the north. It was _black_ , darker than the coffee in a Turkish café and twice as potent; it looked, frankly, like Jim had finally gone one flirt too far with Spock and been thrown down the concrete stairwell.

 

“What in the hell were you doing?” McCoy snapped, turning Jim around and squinting at the run of his ribs, not yet daring to touch. They looked to be moving evenly with his breathing, but: “Deep inhalation and hold it.” Jim did so, and they rose perfectly normally. “Okay, that’s fine. I repeat: what in the hell have you been doing?”

 

Jim coloured; the bruise remained smugly dark. “I...may have been fencing with Sulu. With spatulas.”

 

McCoy groaned, pressing a flat palm firmly to the bruising and ignoring the flinch. The ribs stayed harsh under the pressure, and the flesh wasn’t overly warm or clogged with fluid. “So, you were being you.”

 

“Yeah, and then I tripped on the rug, and Sulu laughed at me. And this morning it was this colour. I felt like someone had punched me in the balls. You know, if my balls were on my ribs. Which they’re not. Obviously.”

 

McCoy ignored him completely, snapping open his briefcase and fishing for the stethoscope with one hand. Jim whined at the cold press, and shut up promptly when McCoy glowered at him. But for all his moaning and general carrying-on, his lungs sounded perfectly normal.

 

“Looks like just a nasty bruise,” he said. “Looks like you were a hair from snapping something, but you got lucky. Should go down in the next couple of days. If it swells up or hurts worse, let me know immediately.”

 

“Yessir, Bones, sir.”

 

“How’s the pain?”

 

“Painful.”

 

McCoy clipped him around the ear.

 

“Ow!”

 

“Answer me.”

 

“Like any old bruise, just worse,” Jim groused.

 

“Uh-huh. What about this morning?”

 

Jim shrugged. “I dunno. It hurt to bend over – oh, real mature, Bones – and I couldn’t go jogging. My chest felt tight; it hurt to breathe a bit.”

 

It was like being hit with a ton of bricks. _Bang_ , straight over the head, and realisation flooded him with all of the intensity of a religious experience.

 

 _Tight_.

 

He stood in his kitchen, stock-still, and _realised_ , his unconscious mind suddenly slamming the pieces together in perfect formation and thrusting them into the textbook of his medical training and life experience, and wrote _EXPLANATION_ on them in capital letters, in red felt pen.

 

 _That son of a motherfucking BITCH_.

 

“Er, Bones?”

 

McCoy was going to fucking _kill_ him. He was going to hunt him down and absolutely _murder_ him. He would cut up the body and hide it in the trash disposal, then emigrate to Argentina and spend the rest of his life deleting the son of a bitch from the internet as well, just for good measure.

 

“Bones?”

 

Spock wouldn’t know what _hit_ him. And it wouldn’t be anything so fucking friendly as a fist. Forget everything else – forget his condition, forget the Hippocratic oath, forget training and ethics and goddamn Christian _morality_ , McCoy was going to _slaughter_ him. Horribly. _Slowly_.

 

“Bones!”

 

“ _What_ , Jim?!”

 

“Er,” Jim said. “Why do you have a...look?”

 

“Because you’re a fucking moron,” McCoy snapped. “Go put a heat pack on it and come back tomorrow.”

 

“Er, fine,” Jim reached for his shirt. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

 

“Fine. Get out.”

 

He was. Or he would be – right after he _killed_ Spock.

*****

Typically, McCoy spent his Fridays doing chores, getting in the weekly groceries, and (every other week, but thankfully not this one) prepping up for the exhaustion that would follow looking after Jo for forty-eight hours. That Friday – two days after Jim’s disastrous spatula-fight, and the realisation of exactly why Spock was, for all his intelligence, an absolute idiot – McCoy spent most of the day...pacing.

 

For all that he had a quick temper, McCoy was not especially bad-tempered. He could rarely sustain anger for long – he flared up and calmed down fast, often hitting boiling point within minutes of getting annoyed in the first place, and hitting serenity again within a minute of the boil. He wasn’t one to hold onto anger – often found it impossible, and usually found it stupid anyway – and was often amused by how many people thought him to be a hot-tempered fool thanks to his propensity towards shouting.

 

That Friday, however, was quite different.

 

The anger, that white-hot flash of pure anger, hadn’t dissipated at all. Sleeping on it had been hard, and he hadn’t slept well, adding irritability to his problems. Thursday’s shift had been spent shouting at unfortunate nurses and particularly stupid patients, and ignoring Spock’s text messages because he just _knew_ that to initiate contact now would be disastrous. He would say something, do something – and then that would be it. They would be over, because Spock wasn’t Joss. He wouldn’t stand, arms folded, and listen, and snap back. He would stiffen up and close off – and stay that way, if McCoy pushed hard enough. And angry like this, he _would_ , and then...

 

But _God_ , he wanted to punch the stupid fucker.

 

It explained everything – _everything_. His dislike of doctors, because he would have been in and out of hospitals and clinics and surgeries several times a year, and possibly for many years, depending how long it had been going on. The lack of any obvious medication, because he wouldn't - probably - have things like pills for it, and he certainly wouldn't keep them in the bathroom cabinet like other people with other problems. The delaying of dates due to so many illnesses – only they weren’t illnesses, they were _the same_ illness, again and again and again. The occasional foray into medical territory, and the quite obvious hatred on his face of doing so. And that _flu_ , that flu-without-a-fever for a week locked up in his apartment, that had been bothering McCoy ever _since_...

 

_Tight._

It explained _everything_ , and McCoy couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. He was a fucking _doctor_ , and he hadn’t guessed. He simply hadn’t _looked_ properly, had never lined up all the pins and _looked_. He'd taken it all apart again and again, but had never bothered to look at the whole picture, never bothered to think that just _maybe_ Spock wasn't behaving like the ideal patient here. He was angry with himself – but he was angrier with Spock. Goddamnit, he was downright _furious_ with Spock.

 

When he’d been ill – it wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to rely on McCoy. It was that he hadn’t wanted him to see. He hadn’t wanted him to know – and that was it, right there. He’d _actively_ kept it a secret, and more than that, he’d risked his health in doing so. And McCoy was no specialist, but he could do the math – the number of dates Spock had changed or missed, the number of times he refused to go somewhere or do something, the three bouts of ‘flu’ since April, the appointment every month at the hospital, hell, the number of times he’d simply _heard_ a slight catch or a vague hitch...there was nothing _mild_ about this, and he had actively risked his own _health_ to keep it a goddamn secret.

 

Those jeans and that jacket, those nights at Harry’s with Jim and himself – there was nowhere he could have been carrying what he needed. _Nowhere_.

 

He was just so _angry_ – angry he hadn’t been told, angry he’d been actively _lied to_ about the whole damn thing, angry that in doing so, Spock was blatantly endangering himself. He was angry with Spock, for hiding it; with Jim, because Jim surely knew as well; with _himself_ , for not having pieced together the very _obvious_ clues from the very beginning; and with the world, for throwing this spanner in the works of an otherwise, frankly, goddamn good relationship. Because how in the hell was this _not_ going to change things? If it didn’t _end_ things, then it would _change_ them, and McCoy didn’t _want_ to change things – but he also couldn’t just _ignore_ it...

 

At ten to five, without much more than the waves of anger (poorly crushed) and the burning hurt burying itself in his heart, he left the house.

 

His knuckles were white on the steering wheel by the time he pulled into the parking lot of Spock’s apartment block, and he sat for several minutes simply clenching and relaxing his fingers on the rubber cover. He’d never raised a hand to his little girl or his wife, or anyone he’d ever dated, but he could feel the _anger_ too close to the surface, simmering and bubbling away like a danger. He wasn’t a stranger to hitting people at all – he’d gotten into fights, he’d won and lost them, and he’d been _angry_ before, angry enough to lash out. He’d hit his sister once, when he was sixteen, and she’d hit him back, and that was the last time Dad had taken his belt to either of them, and he’d been that angry then...

 

He took deep breaths, and fought to calm himself. If nothing else, he’d seen those biceps. If he hit Spock, the returning smack would take his teeth out, and that was the last thing he needed on top of all of this.

 

He waited perhaps twenty minutes before the rumble of an engine rattled into the parking lot, and then there he was, astride that bike like he was born to it, looking a million dollars in heavy leathers and helmet despite the heat, hair damp with sweat when he removed the headgear, but gorgeous all the same – and McCoy used the picture he made to calm himself enough to get out of the car without the fear that he’d just rip the radio right out of its place and hurl it at his thick, goddamn _obstinate_ – “stubstinate, Lenny, that man is just downright _stubstinate_ , and don’t you go forgettin’ it!” – head.

 

Spock caught sight of him immediately, but something was written in his face or his body or the way he walked that even Spock could read, because his face shuttered and he stiffened up, wary from the outset, and the question of McCoy’s name was spoken slowly, almost uncertainly.

 

And McCoy had never uttered the phrase himself, and only ever heard it directed his way once, on a cold November with a howling toddler in the background like a bad stereo, but out it came, and the hot September day bled away into the coldest chill of January.

 

“We need to talk.”


	24. Arc One, Part Twenty-Three

Spock stiffened like he’d been slapped.

 

“What do you wish to discuss?” he asked stiffly, sounding more like he was agreeing to torture.

 

“Not in public,” McCoy said flatly, and Spock’s jaw tightened to the point that he was probably grinding his teeth. It dimmed the rage a little; at least, right now, Spock was suffering too. Perhaps McCoy wasn’t a nice man after all.

 

Still, Spock turned on his heel in silence, letting them into the building and leading the way up the stairs in an atmosphere that could only be described as glacial. And McCoy was already cataloguing, as he wrestled the door open: the bare, wooden floors; the obsessive cleanliness of the apartment; the constantly-jammed-open windows to air the place out; the complete lack of dirty laundry _anywhere_ in the apartment, when the man was apparently perfectly content to leave coffee rings on the table and never put away the clean dishes.

 

McCoy marched straight for the bedroom.

 

“Leonard, what...?”

 

He ignored him, storming into the small room and jerking open the top drawer – the banned drawer, the place he’d never been – and closed his hand around the plastic container within.

 

“Leon–” Spock, halfway across the main room, stopped in his tracks when McCoy re-emerged.

 

“Explain,” McCoy said – and dropped the asthma inhaler on the coffee table between them.

 

There was a short, sharp silence.

 

“I’m waiting.”

 

Spock didn’t take his eyes from McCoy’s as he stepped forward, bent and picked the inhaler up, curling his fingers around it as though it were a preferred toy. He began to turn it almost absently in his hand. _Fidgeting_.

 

“Okay, let’s start with the basics, then,” McCoy snarled. “How bad is it?”

 

“There is not a scale of which I am aware.”

 

“Stop with the fucking evasions!” he shouted. “You wanna be specific, I’ll be specific: how many different inhalers do you have?”

 

“...Three.”

 

“Anything else?”

 

“...I am prescribed one medication via tablet form; I have a nebuliser which I periodically use in the evenings, and I receive injections every four to six weeks to control symptoms.”

 

McCoy bit back the swearing. Maybe if it had been _mild_ , then...

 

“So you have,” he ground out through his teeth, “asthma so goddamn _severe_ you’re pumped up to your oversized brain on just about ten different goddamn drugs and have enough plastic in your medicine cabinet to give an environmentalist cardiac arrest, _and you go wandering around in San Fran-fucking-cisco without your inhalers_?!”

 

Spock backed up a step.

 

“And you didn’t _think_ , for one _fucking_ minute, that I should _know about this_?!” McCoy roared. “That I should _know_ that the man coming into my goddamn house, with _carpets_ and _dust_ and motherfucking _plants_ , has asthma so bad _he’s in the clinic every month for injections_?!”

 

“...Every six weeks is not...”

 

“Don’t you fucking start with me!” McCoy bellowed, absolutely beside himself with rage. “Don’t you fucking _dare_! One thing – one little, goddamn thing, and you could have been triggered into a _massive_ attack of which I knew nothing, and could have done nothing, and couldn’t have even told the fucking paramedic how to help you _because I would not have had a clue whether this was actually normal or not_! And you know what – no, shut the fuck up, I’m talking – that’s not even the bit that makes me _really_ mad. You wanna know what _really_ gets me? The _amount of fucking times_ that I have seen you – _seen you with my own eyes_ – walking around _and there is nowhere on your person you could have an inhaler_. Absolutely fucking nowhere! So how many times have you put yourself at risk like that, _right in front of me_?! How _many_!”

 

There was silence – an obscene gaping hole in the middle of the room.

 

“You can’t even fucking tell me, Jesus goddamn Christ,” McCoy hissed, turning away. “You didn’t just _not tell me_ , you actively kept it a secret. The _amount of times_...did you actually have the flu this year? Ever? Or was it that I walked in on the tail end of an attack, and you didn’t feel the fucking need to fill me in? I’m a goddamn _doctor_ – what part of that means _nothing_ to you?!”

 

“I am not your _patient_.”

 

There was another silence, but this one didn’t gape. This one teetered, the crystal glass on the edge of the precipice, and...

 

“ _What_?!”

 

...shattered.

 

“I,” Spock repeated deliberately, “am not your patient.”

 

The inhaler made an alarming creaking noise, and he placed it on the arm of the couch.

 

“ _Explain_.” McCoy’s voice was nothing but a growl now.

 

“You are a doctor. Your first course of action is to examine my medical history and my current prescriptions. I receive enough _interference_ from the medical profession as it is; I will not welcome another interfering outside of the clinic as well as in it.” If McCoy’s voice was a growl, Spock’s was a glacier: slow, deliberate, and _frozen_.

 

“So because you don’t like fucking doctors, you lied to me.”

 

“Because I do not appreciate having my life dictated to me by men with delusions of grandeur granted to them by letters after their names, I kept my private life exactly that: private.”

 

“Yeah, except it ain’t fucking _private_ anymore, is it? It ain’t _private_ , when you could have an attack in the middle of my kitchen and end up being hauled off in an _ambulance_ with _oxygen deprivation_ because you didn’t trust me enough to bring a fucking inhaler! Just what in the _hell_ was going through your _head_?!”

 

“I think you should leave,” Spock snapped.

 

“What is it? You don’t trust me? You got somethin’ against my profession? Or is it,” McCoy took a dangerous step closer, “that it’s not me, it’s you.”

 

Every muscle snapped tight, and the frost in Spock’s stare began to resemble the surface of Ganymede.

 

“So that’s it,” McCoy snarled. “Fucking fantastic. So, what, you do this with everyone? Do you _ever_ take your medica – no, never mind, I don’t wanna know. Does Jim know?”

 

“Leave.”

 

“So that’s a no,” he bulldozed on. “You don’t want anyone to know – you want that dirty little secret locked up tight, and you’ll put your fucking _life_ on the line to keep people from knowing about it. You _stupid, fucking_...”

 

“ _Leave_!”

 

“Explain it to me – explain how someone so goddamn smart can be so fucking _stupid_ as to ignore this! Jesus fucking Christ, you will kill yourself, and for what?! For pride, for dignity, for fucking superiority – what in the hell is it, Spock, because I’m struggling to come up with something that doesn’t paint you as fucking idiotic or fucking suicidal!”

 

Spock turned on his heel and wrenched the door open with enough force that the security chain, probably attached on automatic motion when they entered, was wrenched from the wall.

 

“Get out,” he hissed.

 

The air hummed with the tension; a shivering guitar string, too fast to be seen.

 

“No,” McCoy said.

 

Spock’s movement was – faster. Faster than the guitar string, faster than should have been humanly possible. In a moment, his fingers closed around McCoy’s shoulder like a vice – digging like in steel – and he was bodily hauled to the open door, and _tossed_ , like a rag doll, out into the hall, crumpling in a heap on the unforgiving floor and swearing over the slam of the apartment door and the scrape of the heavy, industrial bolt through the wood.

 

“This isn’t _fucking_ over just because you’ve had e-fucking-nough!” he roared through the frame, then slammed through the doors to the stairs, pounding one hard enough against the wall that the glass window smashed and rained shards onto the concrete stairwell.

 

Inside the apartment, Spock sat with his back pressed to the door, and wished that the tightening band around his chest could be permanent this time.

 

*

 

Some things need time; others need immediacy, and McCoy had been in the medical profession (and the occupation of being a younger brother, followed by a husband, followed by a father) too long to fail to identify the former from the latter.

 

Saturday morning found him back in the hall outside Spock’s apartment, having followed the mailman inside, and stepping over the glass that nobody had bothered to clean up, in order to rap on the door for almost fifteen minutes and calling Spock’s name before the bolt slid back.

 

The face that met him was one part ill, two parts icy fury.

 

“If I must call the police to have you removed, I will do so,” Spock said shortly.

 

“Or we could talk about it.”

 

“I believe that was your intention yesterday.”

 

“And I lost my temper, and I can’t promise the same won’t happen now, but can you at least  see why?”

 

“ _Leave_.”

 

“No,” McCoy jammed his boot in the doorway. “Spock. C’mon. Talk to me. _Yes_ , I’m angry with you for pulling this shit, but I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to tell me.”

 

“I am not,” Spock said sharply.

 

McCoy winced. “Why not?”

 

“ _Leave_.”

 

“I said no,” McCoy persisted, pitching his voice as calm as possible, no matter how he actually _felt_. His shoulder still hurt from yesterday; another shove wasn’t on the cards. “Spock, we can have this out with all your neighbours listening in, or you can let me in and we have it out together, just the two of us.”

 

The door was pressing his foot into the frame now; it was beginning to get markedly uncomfortable.

 

“ _Or_ we could go somewhere else. Get breakfast or something.”

 

“If you are so concerned about my exposure to _risk_ ,” and Spock sounded downright _scathing_ , which was, for all his sarcasm and bite, something that McCoy hadn’t heard from him before, “then it would not be wise to leave the apartment today. Now you may leave freely, or under arrest.”

 

“Spock, please,” McCoy dared to worm a hand through the gap and close it around Spock’s barely-visible wrist. “Let’s talk about this. You shut that door, and – we both know it’s over. I don’t want it to be over.”

 

Spock’s skin was cool and clammy, his expression a somewhat metaphorical match.

 

“Please,” McCoy repeated.

 

Spock closed his eyes. “Leonard, I am tired.”

 

“I know,” McCoy said, stroking a thumb along that cold skin. “I know y’are. We’ll actually talk this time, okay?”

 

The door eased back, the torn-off chain not yet replaced, and Spock stepped aside. McCoy slipped in, toeing off his shoes in the hope that he wouldn’t have to leave again quite so quickly as last night, and took stock.

 

Spock looked like shit.

 

“Shit, you had an attack, didn’t you?”

 

“Unsurprisingly,” came the waspish reply, and Spock stalked back to the couch, out of reach. “If you wish to talk, do so, and do not try my patience.”

 

McCoy bit back the quickfire response. He was no diplomat, but he knew when to pick his battles. Instead, he sank down on the opposite end of the couch, glancing briefly about for the absent inhaler(s), and opened his mouth.

 

And closed it again.

 

“Leonard, I suggest you talk, before I ask you to remove yourself,” Spock snapped, sitting cross-legged at the other end of the couch – and well out of reach – with a blanket draped over his knees.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” McCoy blurted out, staring at the blanket.

 

Spock pursed his lips. “What I choose to divulge about my life and its contents is my affair.”

 

“When I’m meant to be sharin’ that life?” McCoy asked, then shook his head. “Never mind. When _not_ divulging it means putting yourself in danger? C’mon, Spock. Tell me the rationality in that.”

 

Spock’s jaw twitched.

 

“See, I don’t think it’s a privacy thing,” McCoy said. “I’m sittin’ in your apartment. I’ve seen the way you are with Jim. I'm sleepin' with you, for God's sake. You ain’t bothered about me bein’ in your _space_.”

 

“What, then, do you think it is, in your professional opinion?”

 

Definite dig. McCoy ignored it. “Hell if I know. I want to say your Neil, but then why cut off the knowledge from Jim, too, if it’s a boyfriend thing? I don’t know enough about your history to draw anything from that. But it’s not _privacy_. And I think you’re self-aware enough to have an idea about it, so – feel like lettin’ me in on the reasons?”

 

Spock narrowed his eyes.

 

“I can draw  somethin’ from _you_ , though,” McCoy said quietly. “I know you well enough to know that you have a lot of this indestructible thing goin’ on. Jim thinks you’re just about as shakeable as the goddamn moon, and yeah, that’s the image you give off a lot of the time. Because you want to? And you don’t like that this asthma makes you look – what? Weak?”

 

Spock said nothing.

 

McCoy shook his head. “It’s not the whole of it, but I’m gettin’ closer.”

 

“If you are quite done with your armchair psychology and your conjecture.”

 

“For the moment. It’s not important right now,” McCoy shrugged. “Spock. Let me in on this. You _can’t_ do this.”

 

“Do what, Leonard?”

 

“ _Ignore it_. Put yourself at risk like that. Is it one of those inhalers-twice-daily jobs?”

 

"Yes."

 

"Do you take them?"

 

“Yes.”

 

“How often?”

 

“Twice a day.”

 

“Every day?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Well, that was something, at least.

 

“And your – tablets?”

 

“Again, as prescribed.”

 

“And the other inhalers?”

 

There was a pause, then: “When required.”

 

“Really? Or just when nobody’s going to see you? Or them?”

 

Another pause.

 

“Spock. Do you take them to work?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I’ll rephrase that. Do you actually take them in the building with you, or leave them stashed in some hidey-hole on the bike?”

 

Another pause, and McCoy felt a tight knot of anxiety forming.

 

“I know you don’t bring them to mine. Or to _Harry’s_ , or any of our dates. What about when you and Jim go riding? Do you take them then?”

 

Silence.

 

“Goddamnit, Spock.”

 

A flicker of tension crept across his features again, and McCoy shook his head.

 

“Spock, I mean it. You can’t do that. You’ve been lucky – damn lucky – but it won’t last. I don’t care whatever neurosis you’ve formed tells you, but taking something you _need_ isn’t weakness, or shameful, or whatever else is jammed in that literal-minded head of yours. And one day, your luck’ll run out and it’ll hit you with a doozy and you won’t have your medication, and...and it’ll be too late. I know response times for the emergency services in this city, and they’re too long.”

 

The silence was oppressive, this time. McCoy could already feel, somewhere in the middle of his chest, the dull ache of this hypothetical grief.

 

“What’ll that do, huh? What’ll that do to me and Jim? That you’re _gone_ because of some neurosis keeping you from carrying your inhalers around?”

 

Spock’s face _tightened_ , and McCoy knew he’d said something wrong again.

 

“I would rather,” Spock said tightly, “live a shorter existence free from this _disease_ , than a long one chained to it.”

 

It was _chilling_.

 

And it was...terrifying. Asthma didn’t do that to people. _Cancer_ did that to people. _Paralysis_ did that to people. Asthma didn’t. People with asthma...they coped. They coped easily, even, for the most part. They could lead perfectly normal lives; they _did_ lead perfectly normal lives. They weren’t even disabled. They could do more or less the same things as everyone else if they took the right precautions. To hear Spock speak...speak like...

 

“It’s...it’s not...”

 

“Do not attempt platitudes, Leonard. I am tired of them,” Spock said wearily.

 

McCoy cleared his throat. “Spock...you can’t think that – that you would be better off...dead at thirty without an inhaler, than eighty with it?”

 

“It is never ‘just an inhaler’,” Spock corrected. “I have lost much of my life to this disease, Leonard, and all that seems to happen is that I lose more with each year. I am less, thanks to it.”

 

“How can you be less?”

 

Spock eyed him.

 

“Spock, you’re – shit, I’m not exactly poetic, but you’re fucking brilliant. You’re a difficult, bloody-minded, brilliant son of a bitch, and just about the most explosive damn person I’ve ever met that I haven’t wanted to murder,” McCoy shook his head helplessly. “You’re not _less_ because you have a condition that needs watching. Would it make me less if I developed a heart condition that needed medication? Would it...”

 

“Would your hypothetical heart condition entail that you failed?”

 

“Failed what?”

 

Spock tilted his head. “Merely failed, Leonard.”

 

“So you think you’re a failure, because of this asthma?”

 

“I know.”

 

McCoy wanted to shake him, say that he _couldn’t_ know that, because it couldn’t be true – but where was his evidence? What did he know, really, about Spock’s _history_ to prove him wrong? What was there in Spock’s history to prove Spock _right_?

 

“You’re wrong.”

 

Spock cocked his head. “On what information do you base this hypothesis?”

 

“On knowing _you_ , Spock, and you’re not a man who fails,” McCoy said heavily. “Look,” he dared it, reaching across the too-wide gap to gather Spock’s cool fingers into his hands. “I think you have some serious issues, and in your head and your way of thinking, not in what your lungs like to do on a daily basis. And I want to help you with that, and I _can_ if you let me, if you give me the time. But I need you to give me the time, and I _need_ you to actually do what you’re supposed to, and _take your medication_.”

 

“I do take my medication.”

 

“ _Including_ the relievers. I want you to carry them around with you. I’m meant to be your – boyfriend, or partner, or whatever the current term is. Let me help.”

 

Something _twitched_ in Spock’s face, and his fingers. McCoy tightened his grip.

 

“Just let me help, and we’ll take it a little bit at a time,” he coaxed. “It doesn’t have to rule your life, Spock. It really doesn’t, especially not when you have someone else sharin’ the load.”

 

“You cannot share a disease.”

 

“You can share treatment and management of a disease. You can share _problems_ – stress and workload and whatever else. They all aggravate asthma, and you know it. You know I can help, and I don’t have to be a doctor to help. I’m not an asthma specialist anyway; I can’t take over even if I wanted to.”

 

Spock dropped his gaze and took what sounded to be a painful, hitching breath.

 

“Just let me help,” McCoy pleaded, squeezing his hands tightly. “Let me help.”

 

Spock closed his eyes and began to take deep, measured breaths, his hands retracting to rest in his lap, folded and tense.

 

“Alright,” he conceded, and the first wheeze escaped his lips.

 

McCoy retrieved the inhaler.


	25. Arc One, Part Twenty-Four

Spock woke to the weight – everpresent weight – and reached on autopilot for the inhaler. The medication no longer had a taste, it was so familiar; the motion barely registered in his conscious mind, it happened so often.

 

The bitterness, too, was routine.

 

McCoy had said that it did not have to rule his life, and that outlined exactly how much McCoy knew of the matter. For all his posturing and declarations, he was no different to Neil, to Nyota, to T’Pring – to Mother and Father. He believed that this could be _overcome_ , with the right application of _doctor’s orders_ and _routine therapy_. He believed that there was an _escape_ , an _end_ , to the mindless hours upon days upon years of being _trapped_.

 

Asthma was not _serious_ , after all.

 

That he could be trapped so utterly by this disease would not be so bad if, perhaps, it had always been there – but Spock could remember the era of not having to consider the ability to attend functions, of not having to make sure every new piece of clothing had pockets large enough to stow inhalers, of not waking three or four times in each and every night to simply _breathe_ – of not wondering, when he retired for the night, whether he would be breathing in the morning.

 

Occasionally – very occasionally – Spock would think that, perhaps, it would be a relief.

 

The fact was, McCoy was ignorant of this. This could not be backstaged – this was the leading role. Spock could remember a time before the band around his ribs, but he could not remember the _sensation_ of having it truly ease. It was always there, pinching and _reminding_ , like the ghost at the feast, visible only to the guilty party.

 

How could it not rule his life? The injections every six weeks, with every new and upcoming drug that was being developed, because the old ones never worked for long. The nebuliser, hidden under the bed and _waiting_ for the nights when he was too exhausted to medicate himself manually, but too tight-chested to breathe without it. The monthly appointments at the asthma clinic, with the frowning doctor and the ever-changing prescriptions that drained his already straining health insurance. The battle every year to gain _anything_ from work without a disability certificate. And, inevitably, every year or so, the hospitalisation for the attacks that would not, could not, be delayed any longer.

 

How could it not rule his life? To obey McCoy’s stipulations, and carry a pharmacy’s worth of drugs in his pocket every minute of every day? To wear – and hide, from the rest of the world until the attacks called – the identification bracelet for the emergency services? To constantly update him, and remind them both, on every little change and every little shift in the course of the disease or the direction of the treatment? To allow him to _witness_ the disease, to bear _witness_ to Spock’s shame and degradation?

 

The attacks – they tore him apart. They took the control and the calm and the stability that he had worked for his entire life, and destroyed them. They rendered him as helpless as a child, shaking and sweating in the aftermath like a palsy patient. They forced a dependency on the medical services that he loathed; they forced a _divorce_ from freedom. That growing sense of self he had been introduced to as a child with every new task that he could perform without the aid or supervision of a parent or an elder, had been ripped from him with that first shattering attack on the floor of his father’s office, in a balmy Sendai summer. He would never be independent; he would never be freed from it, except in death, and the end of existence was no freedom at all.

 

And if he could have coped in the manner that a diabetic did – in private, without the prying eyes of strangers looking in – then perhaps it would not have been so bad. He did not usually harbour such resentment for his morning and evening medications as he did for the others, which could be required in the middle of busy crowds, or at work in front of colleagues, or in _Harry’s_ in front of his friends and acquaintances. If he could have coped thus, without anyone ever knowing or needing to know, then perhaps...

 

He had tried, but – not enough. Yet another failure to hold to his name.

 

Instead, eventually, everyone knew. He had managed thus far to keep Jim from finding out, but McCoy had made the jump himself. T’Pring had found his inhalers upon a visit to his dorm room; Nyota had _witnessed_ an attack, to his eternal shame, and had never looked at him the same way again. His mother had always watched him with that wary, prepared gaze, and his father...

 

He had always been a disappointment to his father. The asthma had been – the end.

 

Eventually, people found it out. And when they did – they were never the same. T’Pring had found him a medical oddity to be tested, unwelcome after years at the hands of every specialist in the country, and they had parted shortly afterwards. Nyota had pitied him, and he had been unable to withstand that pity. Neil had found it bothersome, and found Spock’s failures as much a disappointment as Sarek had so many years earlier. And McCoy...

 

_“It doesn’t have to rule your life, Spock.”_

McCoy would be soon to follow.

 

*

 

McCoy could remember, just after his seventeenth birthday, his father being diagnosed. He could remember the way his mother had been all tight and shivery for days afterwards, and finally the row that broke the tension, only a few weeks into the rusty fall. It was the biggest argument they'd ever had - his mother had screamed and shouted and cried, and his father had shouted back, thrown all the best china against the kitchen wall in a fit of rage, and stormed out. He hadn't come back for four days.

 

The tension in that four days was exactly the same as it was now: while he had, somehow, managed to salvage enough pieces and force them back together to prevent Spock dumping him at the apartment door, the peace was a fragile, delicate thing. Walking on eggshells would have been a less tentative project. The very air seemed thin and difficult to breathe, always just a little out of range, and he didn't dare lean to catch it.

 

McCoy was...well, he was a McCoy. He didn't handle tension very well.

 

Those four days, with Dad gone and Mom furious all the time, had been collectively memorised among the McCoy children as the fighting days. David had been away, thankfully, but Rose and Alice and their younger brother had fought like jackals over the smallest things. Rose had pushed Alice down the stairs for criticising her boyfriend's taste in clothes; when Alice had landed, she'd hauled off and punched her brother in the face, who'd punched her right back. Mom had beat them black and blue with a wooden spatula in the kitchen, and she'd shouted the whole time.

 

McCoy would go right back and do it all again, for four months instead of four days, over the tension that hung here now.

 

The following Monday, Spock came out to _Harry's_. McCoy hadn't been expecting him, and Jim was plainly oblivious to anything between them, as he crowed in triumphant delight, accused Spock of being late, and insisted on buying the first drink. When McCoy asked, in Jim's brief absence, if Spock had his inhaler, he received an absolutely filthy look and a terse instruction to mind his own if he didn't want to end up single again. They'd argued again in the parking lot, in hissed whispers with Jim hovering in confused bewilderment at the door to the bar, when Spock had tried to go home.

 

"You are not my keeper," Spock had spat when McCoy had tried to insist that he bring his inhalers. "I am an adult, Leonard, and this is none of your business, no matter what your lofty opinion of yourself is."

 

The barb had stung, and McCoy had let him go without much more fight than that, wounded and certain of the problem. They were both too close and too emotionally wound up about it, but Spock had a neurosis the size of the city, and McCoy couldn't just back off and take the time to calm down. He wasn't willing to tolerate the risk any longer - but Spock, it seemed, wasn't all that willing to tolerate _him_.

 

He managed to talk him into dinner and a movie on the Thursday after work - some science fiction movie that Spock waspishly noted after the fact highlighted all the problems with the genre today - and kept the talk away from the asthma, and yet the tension was still there. He didn't dare let himself be as touchy-feely as usual; Spock was quiet and subdued, and didn't respond to his caustic remarks on their surroundings with nearly as much fire as he always had before. They were slipping - hell, they were falling apart, and McCoy recognised the drifting process as sure as he'd recognise his own mother's face. He had, after all, been here before.

 

Only the last time, he hadn't wanted to hold on. The last time, he'd known the end was coming and he hadn't minded all that much, truth be told. The things he didn't want to lose didn't include Jocelyn herself, and he had never tried all that hard to forge new links between them. He'd let it happen, and he hadn't much mourned the loss of his wife when they had finally broken up.

 

This time, he didn't want to let go, and he didn't know how to hold on. He desperately didn't want to let go: for all that he was an impossible, difficult, contrary, awkward son of a bitch, Spock was something else as well, and McCoy didn't want to go back to pizza on the couch by himself and nobody to snipe at about the idiocy of motorcycles. He wanted that sarcasm on the other end of the phone line; he wanted that quiet serenity if they spent the night together, or the warm, almost shy manner in which his attention was accepted, as if Spock would bask in the simple presence of him. He didn't want to let go of it, any of it - and he had no idea how to hang on.

 

The air was getting thinner, and he couldn't quite breathe for it, and the fear was beginning to trickle in amongst the tension that shivered in his bones, and he didn't know how to stop it. He didn't think he _could_.

 

"I don't know how to hang on to you," he said, about a week and a half after the row, and Spock looked at him with that implacable blankness. "You're drifting away from me, and I don't know how to stop you."

 

Spock had said nothing.

 

"I don't want this to happen," McCoy said flatly, and some shiver had run through Spock's shoulders at the proclamation. After a while, McCoy added, "You didn't bring them again, did you?"

 

"No," Spock said, and turned away.


	26. Arc One, Part Twenty-Five

Since the row, Spock had woken every night with the tightness in his lungs and a heavy depression settling in his brain, inky-dark and desolate. He stared at the ceiling, every night, and tried to remember that there had been life before Leonard McCoy, and he would not have to spend so much time and effort on his disease if McCoy were not around to prod and poke and _analyse_ all the time.

 

He couldn't quite convince himself.

 

The moment that he had thrown McCoy out of his apartment two weeks ago, he had known that it was over. McCoy could persist and cling and demand all he wanted, but the asthma was not going to go away, and Spock could not bear the agony of letting the wound fester, only for McCoy to do later on what he should be doing now, and decide that it was far too much bother to be dealing with. Or worse, the pain of seeing pity written into his face all the time, and forcing Spock to cut them loose instead.

 

Better to do it now than later, and save them from the distress of a drawn-out drowning.

 

And yet...and yet Spock could not quite bring himself to do it.

 

Every time he worked himself up enough to say the words, McCoy would come around with that lazy magnificence to him and that half-smile through sarcasm that had wriggled past Spock's shields without him noticing, and they would spend a day away from the topic and have Spock half-unsure, yet again, as to whether he should really deny any more chances to this.

 

"I don't want this to happen," McCoy had said, and Spock quite wholeheartedly agreed - but the asthma lurked in the background, the spectre at the feast, and taunted him with the knowledge of what was to come.

 

T'Pring. Nyota. Neil.

 

T'Pring had never known someone with asthma, and perhaps Spock had not minded so much at first. She did not pity him like Mother did, and she did not scorn him like Father, and he was not the endless bother and drag that the nurses rolled their eyes at in the wards every day and every night. She found him curious, and he had never minded being curious before. But curiosity - endless questions, endless research, endless proposals to try this environment or that route to whichever class...eventually, her interest in the asthma began to outweigh her interest in him, or that was how it felt. When his mother had died, and her first question was as to whether lilies were a bother to his illness, he had known that they had run their course.

 

And from T'Pring came this faltering determination to not allow the affair to drag on longer than was strictly necessary. He had lingered with her, until the elegant grace and exquisite smile of Nyota Uhura had appeared in the cafe beneath the modern languages department, and had only broken things off with a semi-estranged T'Pring when Nyota had smiled at him one morning in the cafe and asked if he could possibly help her with her Mandarin Chinese. The break-up had been...a mess, a bloody mess of idiocy and resentment, and it had been almost a year before they could stand to speak to one another again.

 

They had recovered though, and he hoped that he and McCoy could do so as well, in time. To lose him _completely_ might well be unbearable.

 

To have his pity would be equally poor. Nyota had offered pity: she had known nothing, as McCoy had not, until he had suffered an attack in her dorm room a week before his graduation. She had called for the ambulance, and held his hand, and talked to him in such a calm, reassuring manner all the way to the emergency room and the powerful drugs that had erased the rest of that night. And the next morning, there had been enough pity in her eyes to drown a cat. They had lasted another three weeks, with her suddenly softer tone of voice and her wary concern before he had had enough of the tiptoeing and had broken things off. He had received enough pity from his mother and the nurses for his entire teenage years; he did not need more.

 

He could not take more, not from McCoy.

 

That was the crux of it. He could not abide pity, and had never been able to - and that would be the result, if he allowed this relationship to continue. Everything would boil down to the asthma; it would follow them everywhere like a jealous and annoying pet, and couldn't be locked in the kitchen for the night the way a naughty puppy could. You couldn't hit asthma with a newspaper. It did what it would, and every time it did, McCoy would either give him more pity, or more tired exasperation, as Neil had always done. It would be a bother, or it would be a reason to coddle him and treat him like a child too stupid to understand his situation.

 

Spock _hated_ it.

 

The asthma had been responsible for almost every negative occurrence in his life thus far, and it would soon be responsible for the loss of McCoy as well, and Spock actively hated it. He had been raised Buddhist, taught not to hate anything and that negative emotions such as hate and jealousy and anger were to be mastered and willed away - but he hated his disease, and he hated it with a fierce anger that he was unashamed of even as he was ashamed of the source of it. He hated being asthmatic; he did not hate hating that situation as much as was humanly possible. It would cause the loss of what had seemed to be, until McCoy had worked it out, the best relationship that Spock had been allowed to have. This half-year had been the best of his life, apart from perhaps the summer of 1980 when he had spent the entire season with his great-grandmother in Ho Chi Minh and had learned to swear in Vietnamese. He did not want to lose that greatness; he did not want to have to spend each and every evening alone in the apartment, with the knowledge of the fact that, once again, his own disease had driven a wedge between himself and quite possibly the most infuriating, brilliant man in the country.

 

He had no choice, and as soon as McCoy would cease disarming him with sudden smiles or flaring wit, he would terminate the arrangement, and live yet again with all of his regrets.

 

*

 

By the end of October, McCoy was beginning to wonder if he could do this.

 

Sometimes, Spock would capitulate and bring his inhalers with him to wherever they were going, but he always kept them hidden in his jacket or on his bike, and refused to tell McCoy if he were feeling unwell or when the last attack had been. Sometimes, he would allow McCoy to see him take his routine evening dose before kicking him out for the night, but he had suddenly veered away from one of them spending the night at the other's, and while he still permitted touching and kissing, it was with a kind of weary, wary anticipation that this could well be the last time, or that it came with some kind of price that Spock didn't like.

 

But McCoy couldn't just ignore it. He couldn't hold up his hands and say, "Okay, whatever, you do what you want with the fucking asthma. Just be my goddamn boyfriend again, not this stranger in your skin." He couldn't do it. He couldn't...

 

The one blessing of Joss had been that the woman was more of a health nut than he was. She actually read the leaflets that came inside medication boxes, for Christ's sake. She had never once ignored an order from a doctor (at least a medical one; she'd ignored him personally a heck of a lot of times) and was religious about taking Jo in for rashes or bumps and bruises or that spell of colic she'd had as a baby. It had been the one thing they had never, ever argued about - because for McCoy, people who ignored or denied the medical facts were fucking morons, and he didn't want to know.

 

Jim would have called it a dealbreaker, and had McCoy know about this before he asked Spock out, then he _wouldn't_ have asked him out. So he supposed it was. With all that brilliance lingering between them for the intervening six months, he was reluctant to break it off when they were otherwise so good together, but with the lasting tension and the refusal to comply with his medical demands, and the fact that Spock carried this look about him nowadays like _he_ wanted it to end too...

 

McCoy wasn't sure he could do this anymore.

 

He wasn't sure if he could carry on being with a man who willingly jeopardised his own health to that extent anymore. He wasn't sure if he could continue to see the man Spock really was instead of the word 'idiot' branded across his forehead as long as he didn't do as he was supposed to. And he wasn't sure if Spock was ever going to let him in regarding the matter.

 

He didn't want to let go, but by the end of October, it was beginning to look like there wasn't going to be another option. Spock never came around anymore; their dates had dwindled to Thursday night, and Monday's at _Harry's_. If McCoy could sweet-talk his way past the apartment door, he was never allowed to stay for long, and their sex life had dwindled to near-non-existence. There was barely anything remaining, bar the intense attraction that McCoy had felt that first night in the bar when Jim's vegetarian ex-colleague in the too-tight pants had shown up, and that attraction simply wasn't enough against the tension and the silence and the _distance_.

 

McCoy had spent a year in clinic, and could still rattle off, "Give it two weeks," in his sleep. As October drew to close, he decided to give them until Christmas to sort it out.

 

And then it was over.


	27. Arc One, Part Twenty-Six

It was early November before the uneasy stalemate broke. The thin ice had been getting thinner with every reminder to bring the drugs, and when the first fat, dark clouds that signalled winter proper rolling in, McCoy was seriously beginning to wonder whether he would see the vacation period as a single man again.

 

It was not until one Sunday afternoon – a grey, slushy affair that stank of rotting leaves and boredom – when he had talked Spock into visiting one of Jo’s favourite parks, that it broke, and entirely of McCoy’s own volition.

 

“Got it?” McCoy asked pointedly as Spock slid into the passenger seat.

 

Spock touched the outline of the inhaler in his jacket pocket before saying, “I am not a child, Leonard.”

 

“Until I can trust you to actually bring it _with_ you, I’m gonna just keep askin’,” McCoy drawled, peeling back out into the traffic. “Mind if I ask you something?”

 

Spock tilted his head in silent invitation.

 

“Your ex must have known. About the asthma, I mean.”

 

McCoy had been worrying at the psychological blocks for a while now, and it kept coming back to this dark horse of an ex-boyfriend. He could understand Jim not being aware of the asthma – after all, Spock was hardly _chatty_ , and Jim didn’t have any medical training to draw from – but to hide it from someone in the same living space would have to be considerably harder.

 

And given that it was the only lead he had...McCoy was suspicious, to say the least.

 

“He did,” Spock said.

 

“So...” McCoy paused. “I could be wrong, but I’m guessin’ he didn’t handle it all that well.”

 

There was a sharp silence.

 

“Look, you split up with him around the same time as I got my divorce, right?”

 

“January of that year, yes.”

 

“Right. And you were with him for three or four years, Jim said. So in that time, he must have seen you...well, pretty bad. And yet you _really_ don’t want me to go there, when purely logically, unless your ex-boyfriend was someone you met at the asthma clinic, I’m the wiser option in terms of who to be with when you’re having an attack.”

 

There was another sharp pause, and McCoy risked a glance as he changed lanes. Spock looked _tense_.

 

“I’m just sayin’, you’re more than a little wound up about it for someone whose ex _must_ have handled it.”

 

“He did not _handle it_ , and that was the problem,” Spock snapped, and then instantly looked as though he regretted the slip.

 

“He couldn’t really have ignored it,” McCoy pointed out, turning into the parking lot and feeling unnecessarily grateful for the light traffic.

 

“He tried,” Spock said flatly, undoing his seat belt before the car had fully come to a stop, and stepping out the moment that McCoy turned off the engine. The cold air brought a faint flush to his face, and quite suddenly between the tension and the chill, he looked _upset_.

 

“What did he do?” McCoy asked quietly, locking the car and coming around it.

 

“He...” Spock’s face tightened impossibly, and McCoy reached out to cup his elbow and draw him towards the park entrance and the miles of empty cold and crisp frost awaiting. It was quiet, at this time in the morning, and they would not be observed or interrupted. “He believed that I was...malingering.”

 

“Fakin’ it?”

 

“Essentially, yes,” Spock said, and took a breath. “Almost...exactly two years ago, I...” he took another breath, shallower, and McCoy frowned. “I experienced a large attack and was briefly hospitalised. I kept suffering relapse attacks for over three weeks, and was unable to return to work. I narrowly avoided losing my job; as it was, my pay was cut until I could return, and the financial strain was considerable. In the end, Neil informed me that...either I ceased to...I believe the term he used was ‘milk it’, or he would no longer be tolerating my...lies.”

 

McCoy gritted his teeth. Hard. A faint grinding noise informed him of the bad idea and he unclenched his jaw again.

 

“So this asshole – don’t interrupt me, that’s an asshole you’re describin’ – had seen you so bad you needed to go to a goddamn _hospital_ , then accused you of _fakin’ it_ to get off work?”

 

Spock stopped to eye him, and eventually nodded. The moment that he did, he was treated to a long string of extremely imaginative curses, and when they subsided, McCoy was...an alarming shade of red.

 

“Did he never goddamn _help_ you with an attack? With keepin’ the place clean and aired out? Hell, with your goddamn inhalers?!”

 

“He was of the opinion that asthma was not a serious illness...”

 

“The _stupid_ son of a...” McCoy stopped and took a deep breath. “So you got dumped because of an illness you can’t damn well help, and a goddamn boss that shoulda known better when you’re on the sick, and when you wind that up with your goddamn perfection issues that you get from Chinatown or wherever the hell you’re from...”

 

Spock’s mouth loosened just enough that he almost cracked a faint smile.

 

“Goddamn, no wonder it’s taken beating at those damn barriers like I’m a goddamn tank,” he muttered, rubbing a gloved hand over his face. “You gotta be kidding. I was expecting a bit of a prick, but _that_ , that right there is a...”

 

“Your language gives me an adequate impression of your thoughts.”

 

“Not right now it don’t,” McCoy growled, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling sharply through his nose. “Jesus fucking Christ. Alright. _Alright_. This shit stops right the fuck here.”

 

“Le...”

 

“You listen to me,” McCoy snapped, seizing Spock’s face in both hands and gripping hard enough that the other man stiffened in sheer surprise. “This fucking _ends_. Whatever the hell he said, whatever the fuck he did, he was completely fucking wrong and if I think you’re letting that little _shit_ influence how you handle this, then I swear to God I will stab you with everything sharper than a butter knife in the whole damn hospital. I don’t care whether he didn’t like to handle it, or whether he thought it was fine – I’m not that fucking stupid, and if I find out you’re putting yourself at risk because you won’t take your medication or you won’t let me help, then I will strangle you myself. You _will_ treat this like the goddamn _serious_ condition that it is and if I hear you breathe a _word_ about how it makes you weaker or im-fucking-perfect or whatever other shit you’ve come out with, I will lock you in that box apartment of yours and _scream_ at you until you learn to take it seriously!”

 

Spock – _stared_ at him, either shocked into silence, or so caught up in the flow of words that he was having to catch up.

 

“And right now,” McCoy snarled, “you are hitchin’. Take. A fucking. Dose.”

 

Without breaking eye contact, Spock slowly slid a hand into his jacket pocket and removed the inhaler. They broke apart for the first rasp of medication, and he closed his eyes briefly, McCoy’s hand returning to rub at his arm.

 

“Have you any idea what you could have done to yourself?” McCoy hissed. “You could have fucking _killed_ yourself because of some fucked-up sense of perfection and some complete _idiot_ thinkin’ it ain’t that bad.”

 

Spock took a second breath, the stale taste of the spray lingering at the back of his mouth.

 

“You know somethin’, it fucking _hurts_. You are just about the most goddamn infuriating piece of work I have ever met and you struggle because you just won’t admit that you could use a bit of help now and then.”

 

“I do not like to rely...”

 

“Even when there’s someone you _can_ rely on?” McCoy demanded.

 

Spock paused.

 

“See, that ain’t it. You’re scared to rely because you shoulda been able to rely on him, but you couldn’t. But I am not him, I am not that fucking _stupid_ , and I am not willing to risk you over something this goddamn _easy_.”

 

Spock was brought up short. It was not an emotional declaration as such, but the sentiment behind it was stark – and it was one that neither of them had expressed, never of them had really talked about it, and to have it so casually thrown his way...

 

“Yeah, see, you don’t get that, do you?” McCoy muttered, shaking his head. “You don’t see how goddamn important you are. Do you get it now? Do you get why you’re pissing me the fuck off with this? Why you’re _scarin’_ me with this?”

 

Spock slid the inhaler back into his pocket. “Leonard...”

 

“Jesus, _please_ , will you just _take your goddamn medication_?” McCoy snapped. “You can keep me out as long as you fuckin’ want, but _take the stuff_. Don’t skip your mornings, don’t go out without your inhalers – call in sick if you feel it! Hell, call _me_ if you feel ill! But just...Jesus, can you at least look after yourself, even if you won’t let _me_ do it?”

 

He had – finally – run out of steam. He felt tired, standing in the middle of an icy park pleading with a man who never wore his emotions on his sleeve, drained through his anger with him and his anger with the absent Neil and hell, even with Jim, for not noticing this himself even though he couldn’t have done. He felt exhausted, as though all of the tension and the aggravation of the past weeks – months – had finally burst out of him, and left him feeling...empty.

 

“God, I need a drink,” he muttered.

 

Spock was still staring at him, _calculating_.

 

“C’mon. I’m freezin’ my ass off. Let’s...get a coffee or something.”

 

He stalked away, hands thrust deep into his pockets, and crunched through frost and ice and stiff stalks of grass to the small cafe with the checked tablecloths and the unhealthily obese cook, neither knowing nor – for once – caring if Spock followed. The air swam through him, clearing the fog of anger and the whirlpool that stirring everything up had caused, and for a brief moment he regretted asking about the ex-boyfriend.

 

And then he didn’t, because he’d needed to say it. And Spock needed to hear it. And if he needed to beat that message into his thick skull, then he would – just...not right now.

 

He had been nursing an obscenely large mug of coffee for a good ten minutes before Spock slid into the seat opposite him and, without preamble, began to speak.

 

“It has become a defence mechanism, of sorts, to keep others from...finding out,” he said quietly. “I do not wish to appear as weak as I am to others, and since Neil and I parted ways, it has become habit to...behave in a manner as though my condition does not exist.”

 

“Not very damn scientific of you,” McCoy grunted.

 

“No,” Spock agreed quietly, and lifted his gaze to meet McCoy’s. “I cannot promise that I can break the habit easily, or quickly, but I shall...endeavour to comply with medical orders more closely...”

 

“ _Exactly_.”

 

“...exactly, and...look after myself better.”

 

McCoy eyed him; the look of open sincerity was not something that Spock could have faked, and he felt that tight, angry knot inside him beginning to unpick itself.

 

“You gonna let me help?” he asked roughly.

 

Spock swallowed. “I am...naturally private, and...that is a deeper issue than the secrecy.”

 

“I see.”

 

“But I will try.”

 

McCoy raised his eyebrows. “You’ll try?”

 

“Yes. I will try to...lean, if I need to do so, and I will try not to shut you out when you begin to push – although I must ask...”

 

He broke off, and bit his lip for a brief moment.

 

“Ask what?”

 

“Do not...stop pushing,” Spock whispered, a sudden hitch back in his breathing. “I know that I do not often react favourably, and that it is upsetting to you, but...I do not wish for you to...give up.”

 

To hell with being in public – McCoy slid a hand across the table and curled his gloved fingers around Spock’s.

 

“You drive me goddamn mad, but I ain’t givin’ up, not if I have to bully you every inch of the way,” he said. “So I’ll keep pushing, and you keep trying to leave that door open for me, and you will take your goddamn medication when you’re told, not just when you’re on the brink of a doozy?”

 

“Yes,” Spock’s fingers squeezed tight around his.

 

“Okay,” McCoy nodded, and smiled. “We can work from there. Startin’ now, if you don’t mind. Don’t think I didn’t hear that.”

 

The rasp of an inhaler had never sounded that positive before.


	28. Arc One, Part Twenty-Seven

McCoy was not a stupid man.

 

McKenna might have been part of the problem – in fact, from his fleeting impression of the redhead at the museum that had seemed an age ago, McCoy judged that perhaps he was a _large_ part of the problem – but three years or not didn’t create neuroses that big without crossing the line into outright abuse. And Spock simply didn’t carry those markers. He was by no means reluctant to discuss McKenna, he was neither physically nor sexually shy, and was as verbally vicious as McCoy, taking it all in the spirit in which it was intended. If anything, he was downright mouthy. He simply _did not carry_ the right markers.

 

And yet the almost phobic responses to his asthma were deeply ingrained – ridiculously so. McCoy didn’t lie to himself and pretend he’d seen every angle, but what he _could_ see was downright frightening with how twisted up and _angry_ it seemed to have made Spock. This wasn’t simply a neglectful ex, this was something _darker_ , something a lot more deep-rooted, something that had psychologically _crippled_ him and made cracking that behavioural loop next to _impossible_.

 

But this line of reasoning brought McCoy right up to a brick wall – and not, for once, of Spock, but of simple _ignorance_. He wasn’t by nature especially nosy as a person. While he liked to be kept in the loop, he’d never seen the point of gossip or sharing every last thing with a partner. He’d objected to the _nature_ of the secret, not the _keeping_ of the secret _itself_. McCoy simply was not put out by, or even curious about, the majority of things Spock kept quiet from him.

 

Somehow, Jim’s warning so long ago – that you could feel like you _knew_ Spock, and then realise that, in fact, you knew very little concrete at all – had come true. Simply put: McCoy didn’t know the history.

 

He knew next to nothing, in fact, beyond Spock’s country of origin. He suspected, simply from Spock’s demeanour, that he was an only child, or at the very least there was a considerable age gap between himself and any siblings, but he didn’t _know_. He didn’t know whether his parents were still alive, or whether they, too, had come to America, or whether it was simply him. He knew roughly _when_ Spock had entered the country, but McCoy knew of enough immigrants sent to live with aunts and cousins and siblings to know that it meant nothing for his parents’ location, then or now. He didn’t know where he had lived, who with, who his friends had been, of boyfriends and girlfriends prior to McKenna (although he _did_ know there had been at least one woman), of his educational or working history – nothing.

 

For all that he knew a lot about the man, he didn’t have much to go on.

 

He did not approach the topic, however, for several weeks, preferring to let Spock regain the footing from which McCoy kept sweeping him. He did not, McCoy was very rapidly learning, appreciate being prodded and poked too often in too short a time, and so it was almost three weeks before McCoy addressed his history, under the dank atmosphere of a constant steely overhang and sputters of feeble, icy rain at all hours. In the warm shelter of the glass-walled cafe in Jo’s favourite park in the fall, he nudged a sugar packet across the table and said, “Do you miss winters in Tokyo?”

 

Spock blinked, tearing his gaze from the hustle of damp, rotting leaves outside, and said: “No, Leonard. I never lived in Tokyo.”

 

“Wherever in Chinatown you did, then.”

 

Spock huffed. “I lived in Sendai.”

 

“I have no idea where that is. Do you miss winters there?”

 

“No.”

 

McCoy blinked. “Just...no?”

 

“That is correct,” Spock said flatly. “What are you really asking, Leonard?”

 

McCoy shrugged, unashamed at being caught. “Some history. Feels like I don’t know a damn thing about _you_ , you know? I don’t know where you came from, what your story is – don’t give me that, everyone has a story. Takes a goddamn crowbar to get a sentence outta you some days.”

 

Spock cracked a tiny smile. “I could say the same about you.”

 

“Yeah, but you know about my mistakes. My adult ones, anyhow. Tell me some stories.”

 

Spock pushed the sugar packet back towards him. “In truth, I do not remember much of Sendai. I was home-schooled, and we frequently would spend weeks in Kyoto. A Kyoto winter is a trying experience, but I cannot recall one in Tokyo at all, and few in Sendai.”

 

“Who taught you?”

 

“A selection of tutors, and occasionally my mother.”

 

“Okay. Tell me about your mom.”

 

This, judging by the way Spock’s fingers began to stroke the rim of the cup absently, seemed to be a safe topic. “My mother was American.”

 

How in the _Christ_ hadn’t he known that?

 

Hell, the mixed race was obvious, and judging by the surname it had to have been his mother that was Caucasian, but he hadn't known that she was American. McCoy was brought up short in the realisation that Jim was right: he knew nothing in factual terms, and it was... _jarring_.

 

“She was born and raised in Chicago. She was an English teacher and moved to Singapore to teach English to students in her twenties, where she met my father. She taught my half-brother English; eventually, my father divorced his wife and married my mother shortly afterwards.”

 

“An affair, huh?”

 

“They both denied it, but my mother was...not the type to rush headlong into decisions,” Spock said evenly.

 

“You get along with your half-brother, then?”

 

“I did,” Spock said evenly. “We have long since lost touch, however. Father...disapproved of my brother’s choices. Almost all of them, in fact. He was a disappointment, and eventually, Father wrote him out of the family. He left when I was ten years of age.”

 

McCoy’s medical training was kicking in – specifically, the basic drills in psychology he’d received at medical school. An older sibling – half, whatever, it counted – being cast out for not living up to a standard. He could do the math.

 

“When I was twelve years of age, I suffered my first attack and was diagnosed as asthmatic. My parents...argued repeatedly over the course of action to take; my mother insisted that returning to Sendai, a less dense city, would be beneficial. Father argued that capitulating to a minor illness would be...”

 

“Minor?” McCoy said sharply.

 

Spock blinked, and looked him in the eye. “It was minor, at that time. My condition now would be...unrecognisable to my doctor then.”

 

“Okay,” McCoy reached out, curling his index finger around Spock’s. So a father that downplayed it, followed years later by a boyfriend that had similarly thought it trivial. Just fantastic. “So they argued. What then?”

 

“They continued to do so. Father began to spend an increasing amount of time at the company; Mother with her students. My tutors would state that Father had invited trouble by marrying an American in the first place, and my mother would become upset, and then Father would become irritated with her...”

 

So, typical domestic shit that plagued families world over. Hell, McCoy had overheard his parents having very similar arguments over their children. They were not unusual in the slightest. And yet, somehow, it sounded...worse. Perhaps because he was simply imagining Spock, all of twelve years old and confused, stuck in the middle. He could not wrap his mind around the intricacies of other people now, never mind at twelve; how had he assimilated that friction?

 

McCoy had the feeling he knew how Spock had taken it.

 

“Shortly before I was thirteen, they argued for the last time – over me. Father stated that my condition could not have come from him; there were no asthmatics in his line. He stated that it was likely to be due to the comparative...weakness of my American genes. My mother...did not appreciate the comment.”

 

That, McCoy suspected, was an understatement.

 

“My mother and I left Sendai two days later.”

 

Oh _yeah_ , that was an understatement.

 

“Where’d you go?” McCoy murmured.

 

Spock glanced up from the cup again and said, “Here.”

 

“To America?”

 

“Yes. Mother opted to return to Chicago. She felt comfortable in her hometown; I did not. My disease worsened until I spent the majority of a year in hospital at the age of sixteen. I was largely educated by my mother in a public ward, and attained my diploma and my acceptance into university from a laptop in the hospital bed.”

 

His tone was becoming unmistakeably _bitter_ , and McCoy curled the rest of his fingers around Spock’s hand carefully.

 

“Did you ever see your father again?” he asked quietly.

 

“Once.”

 

“When was that?” McCoy asked. “How old were you?” In reality, he wanted to know – had that distant, disapproving parent ever stepped foot in his son’s hospital room, either in Japan or America? And yet part of him also didn’t want to know.

 

“I was twenty years old,” Spock said flatly. “It was at my mother’s funeral.”

 

McCoy’s lungs spasmed as though Spock had punched the air out of him. His brain hovered over both sides of it – a seven-year estrangement from his father as a teenager, and the estrangement being broken by the death of his _mother_. A twenty-year old man losing his own mother – who, from what Spock had said, must have only been in her forties. And the father that hadn’t breached the gap, and chose to do it then.

 

A hell of a lot about Spock’s mindset was beginning to make sense.

 

He squeezed the white fingers in his. There was no answering pressure.

 

“Did your mom actually tell your old man how to find you before...?”

 

Spock looked like he very much wanted to roll his eyes. “Leonard. Father can find out more or less anything that he wants to know. Doubtless if I were to call and inform him of our relationship, he would not be surprised.”

 

“Great, I’m datin’ a guy from the Japanese mob,” McCoy joked, trying to lighten the mood a little, and Spock’s fingers finally closed about his in reply. “So if your mom was American, why was English your second – no, third – language?”

 

Spock blinked. “She only spoke Japanese to me until we left Sendai, Leonard.”

 

“Huh,” McCoy grunted. “Weird.”

 

“I do not believe she ever expected me to need to speak English as a native speaker,” Spock said quietly. “I was taught, of course, but...I did not speak it habitually. It was not particularly used in the household, and Father employed better Chinese teachers than English teachers for me. It was expected that I would follow Father into the family business, which was conducted with a sister company in Beijing. English was merely a useful addition, rather than a necessity. I still find myself thinking in Japanese more often than English.”

 

“If you’re thinkin’ at all, I ain’t doin’ my job right,” McCoy drawled, and the dark tension in Spock’s features lifted a little. In one way, McCoy regretted having poked the hornets’ nest; in another, he didn’t at all. Things...made a lot more sense now. He really should have poked said nest _sooner_.

 

“Perhaps,” Spock allowed. He paused, and said: “She would have liked you.”

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“Indeed. She had a particular fondness for that which irritated me.”

 

McCoy grinned. “Sounds like my kinda lady.”

 

“Perhaps it is fortunate for me that you should never meet,” Spock said dryly, and McCoy chuckled.

 

“So your old man is a stubborn mule, and your momma’s a dictionary. Certainly explains you. No brothers or sisters?”

 

“I am my mother’s only child, if that is to what you refer.”

 

“Pity,” McCoy said. “Bullying a younger brother might have done wonders for you.”

 

Spock rose an eyebrow. “The boy in the apartment above ours attempted to bully me in our early adolescence. Father was...most displeased with my tendency toward fighting.”

 

“Musta been the American in you.”

 

“It must have,” Spock agreed placidly, and McCoy grinned.

 

“C’mon,” he said. “That sunshine ain’t gonna last forever. Let’s get goin’.”

 

Spock did not reclaim his hand for some time.


	29. Arc One, Part Twenty-Eight

It...helped.

 

It gave McCoy what he needed, in a way. It hadn’t been McKenna – not _really_. The ginger moron hadn’t helped, that was for damn sure, but he wasn’t the root and cause of it. His influence could be undone easily enough with time.

 

No, the root of it all was far, far older than that – decades old, in fact, right back to the divorce of Spock’s parents, and in small ways even earlier in the disappointment of his father and the casting out of his older brother. McCoy had been right the first time around: this was a neurosis, fully developed and ticking away. A fear of being seen as weaker, of being disadvantaged in some way, and a fear that had centred on the very condition that made him thus in his father’s eyes. And then compounded by _ignorance_ – by the numbers of people that had shrugged off asthma as being something unimportant, trivial and minor, and had accused him, indirectly or directly, of exaggeration.

 

Compounding in a man terrified to let other people know, for fear for provoking the same careless reaction, and determined to ignore it as best he could and deny the impact it had on his life. A man who felt...

 

McCoy saw it now. Spock felt crippled by it, and furious with _himself_ for capitulating to it.

 

He would never be able to turn that tide, McCoy was beginning to realise. Neuroses formed in childhood were much stronger than those in adulthood. They were ingrained in a way that McKenna could not (yet) have achieved. Over thirteen years of this particular phobia was ground into Spock’s psyche as irreversibly as his own name, and there was no way McCoy was going to be able to shake him out of this one.

 

So his tactics changed.

 

He had thought, when he had assumed it was McKenna’s fault, that a sharp smack upside the head and some attention from a partner who wasn’t so fucking stupid would do the trick. Now, he had come to realise that it would quite possibly take another thirteen years of being told, again and again and _again_ , that it _wasn’t_ anything to be ashamed of.

 

So...he changed the plan of attack.

 

Winter had rolled in good and proper – dank and vile, with low-hanging cloud that smeared pollution into everything it touched. Dates transferred more or less seamlessly from walks and evenings out to takeout on Spock’s couch, or proper cooking in McCoy’s kitchen and (on one memorable occasion) sex in the conservatory with the rain drumming on the glass. And so it was easy to essentially...well. Get Spock used to McCoy just _knowing_.

 

It was slow progress, and he had to keep up the habit of demanding to see that he had his medication whenever he came over, but if he could just get Spock accustomed to the fact that McCoy knew and hadn’t scoffed or run for the hills, he would gain a lot of influence over the way Spock thought about it, with time. And so he would drag out their evenings until the daily dosage was due, or stay the night and into the next morning until Spock was forced to take his pills in front of him – and he _knew_ , Spock _knew_ , what with the looks he would shoot McCoy’s way, but...

 

The first time he woke up, nestled against Spock’s back, to the hiss and rasp of an inhaler, he knew he was beginning to make some headway.

 

For the most part...hell, for the most part, he left Spock alone. The _stupidity_ of not carrying his medication aside, Spock really didn’t mess with it all that much. He hadn’t, McCoy worked out, been lying about taking his dailies and his pills; as far as McCoy could see, he really did take those without complaint and without fail. Getting him to bring them to McCoy’s when he spent the night was a small argument in itself, but once he caved to it, he seemed to actually _take_ them without needing further insistence. He never skipped out on his injections either, although he _did_ utterly refuse to allow McCoy to go with him to the clinic. (McCoy had backed down. For now.)

 

But McCoy had taken enough psychology modules in medical school, and had been married to a law student with expertise in cross-examination long enough, to know that sometimes the smallest things had the biggest influence, and could turn a lost cause into a battle won.

 

It was in the little things that McCoy began his campaign, then. There was the positive reinforcement: when he woke to the hiss of the morning reliever, he tried to dissuade any negative feeling with affection, usually kissing the nearest part of Spock available at the time. There was the unconscious designation: he corrected, even absently, every time Spock referred to it as a disease or an illness, and replaced the word with ‘condition’ instead. There was the reliance: persuading Spock to trust him with the matter, even in the small things like picking up a prescription for him on Fridays while he was at work, or leaving a spare inhaler in one of the drawers in McCoy’s kitchen on a semi-permanent basis.

 

And it was the complete lack of _moving_. No matter how much Spock argued (and he did) or how many threats he made (a lot) or how many times he outright told McCoy to leave well enough alone (several times), McCoy absolutely refused to budge. He could not be relied on were he to step away from it; he could not even win a battle, never mind the war, if he shied away from any of the thousand little things that he had to try to change now. So they fought, and McCoy stood his ground, and sometimes he lost the battle and sometimes he won, but he refused to move on the issue, and sometimes – _sometimes_ – his resilience would wear Spock down.

 

He picked his battles carefully, as well. There was no point, he knew, in attempting to get Spock to widen the circle of people who knew. Not yet. He was not comfortable with _McCoy_ knowing, never mind anyone else; given the choice, McCoy knew Spock would erase that knowledge and endow him with ignorance again. There would be no point whatsoever in creating fights about telling Jim, much as McCoy _wanted_ him to tell Jim. There would be no point in persuading him to use the nebuliser if McCoy was around; he refused point-blank to do it, and with such finality that McCoy knew that, for now, it wasn’t worth the fight it would take to get him to give way on the matter.

 

It was exhausting – but then, sometimes, Spock would look at him, and he wouldn’t say a word but the _why are you doing this?_ would be written in every inch of his face, and the sheer lack of comprehensionwould break McCoy’s heart, and remind him exactly what he was fighting for.

 

And sometimes Spock would curl his fingers around McCoy’s on the plastic of the inhaler on a creaky day, and he wouldn’t say a word, but the lean of him into McCoy’s arm and the silent rub of his cool fingers over the back of McCoy’s hand would say everything that he couldn’t.

 

McCoy wasn’t giving up on this. _Ever_.

 

*

 

The idea had been to go shopping for Christmas gifts before Jo got wind of the time of year and ate the rest of McCoy’s time in the run-up to the day itself _alive_ with her enthusiasm, but the moment Spock cracked the door open, it was apparent that wasn’t going to happen.

 

“Oh hell,” McCoy said, taking in the clammy sheen to his face and the sheer bloodlessness of his face. “One of those days?”

 

Spock wordlessly released the chain and let him in, seeming to shrink into his bathrobe as though expecting a blow.

 

“How bad?” McCoy asked, locking the door behind him and toeing his shoes off. “You actually had an attack, or you hovering?”

 

“A minor one this morning,” Spock croaked, and McCoy winced.

 

“You probably should let the clinic know, that’s the second one in a fortnight,” he coaxed, reaching to press his knuckles to Spock’s cheek. His temperature seemed normal, but there was a definite tremor. “You been sleeping?”

 

“No. You should go; I will not be good company.”

 

“Nice try,” McCoy said breezily. “You been more stressed than usual lately?”

 

Spock’s mouth tightened, and McCoy sighed heavily.

 

“Yeah, I know,” he ran his thumb over the cheekbone. “I know I’ve got you on edge about it, but it’ll pass. You can’t tell me there’s no benefit in having someone ready and willing to help you out when they come.”

 

Spock’s jaw worked and he hunched his shoulders, shrinking further into the bathrobe and evading the mild challenge in McCoy’s voice. He looked tired; McCoy’s campaign worked best at these times, when he was worn-down and too exhausted to put up a real fight. When what McCoy said just might sink in a little deeper than usual.

 

“You should return to your plans,” Spock offered finally, and McCoy reeled him in with a sigh, sliding an arm around his shoulders and kissing that cheekbone lightly.

 

“You’re more important than shopping,” he said. “I can always go before work in the week.”

 

“But...”

 

“C’mere.”

 

That Spock let him tighten the hold until it was a proper hug said it all – for all his protestations and his reluctance to let McCoy in, there were occasionally glimmers of _wanting_ to let him in, and when he buckled into McCoy’s arms without much more objection, it was obviously one of those times. McCoy’s decision to stay became concrete.

 

“Alright,” he said lowly. “A day in it is. Weather outside is crap anyway.”

 

Spock fisted a hand in the back of his jacket.

 

“Let me help.”

 

Spock sighed into his shoulder, and nodded.

 

“There, that was painless,” McCoy kissed his ear and drew back. “C’mon, let’s give your breathing exercises a try and see what useless drivel’s on the box.”

 

The main room was more haphazard than usual – there was a plate covered in toast crumbs that hadn’t been washed up, and the couch cushions were rumpled – and when Spock folded himself back down into a corner of said couch in an unmistakeably defensive position, one pocket of his bathrobe distinctly held his inhaler. He looked tense, stressed, and almost – afraid wasn’t the right word, but...apprehensive, perhaps? Whatever it was, McCoy didn’t like it.

 

He stayed on-track, though, stripping the duvet from the bed and bringing it out to the couch, setting them up under it until Spock was curled at his side, head on McCoy’s shoulder and hand in his under the sheet. The position forced him to relax a little more; when McCoy began to rub calming circles into his wrist, the stuttered hesitance of his breathing began to ease and open up, and he closed his eyes.

 

“Go on,” McCoy murmured lowly. “Do your zen thing.”

 

The Buddhist in Spock apparently still practised meditation, and McCoy had caught him numerous times performing meditative breathing exercises to ward off attacks (or explosive arguments) and sure enough, mere minutes after he got them settled, Spock’s breathing adopted that odd, deep cadence, and eventually fell into rhythm with McCoy’s own.

 

McCoy set his cell on silent and settled in for whatever crap was playing on the television.

 

“Leonard?”

 

“Mm?”

 

“...Thank you.”

 

He squeezed Spock’s hand in the depths of the duvet, turned his head to kiss the dark hair, and smiled against his scalp.

 

“Shut up and concentrate.”


	30. Arc One, Part Twenty-Nine

Spock’s birthday, that year, happened to fall on a Wednesday. And as they seemed to be cut from the same cloth, McCoy was only aware of the run-up to said birthday thanks to palming his wallet during one of Jim’s Monday nights at _Harry’s_ and sneaking a look at his license (which had an alarmingly psychopathic photo). And, as Spock had been a sneaky bastard back in August, McCoy had opted to be equally sneaky when the twenty-eighth of November rolled around, and was barely separable from the night before thanks to the heavy, black clouds belching rain over the entire city.

 

McCoy had, therefore, made plans – leaving thankfully on time, he spared enough to return home, shower, change, and head right back out to Spock’s apartment, thumbing out a text in the middle of slow-moving, rain-clogged traffic. By the time he pulled up in front of the apartment block, the rain had eased enough to allow a sprint from the car to the door without getting drenched through, and taking the stairs allowed him to look at least semi-dry by the time Spock swung the door open.

 

“Leonard, what...?” he blinked at McCoy’s smart slacks and dark shirt.

 

“Get yourself pretty and let’s go.”

 

Spock narrowed his eyes. “Pretty?”

 

“We’re going out,” McCoy said, pointedly jamming his foot in the doorway.

 

“We are?”

 

“Yep,” McCoy said. “I took a leaf outta your book, and your license outta your wallet.”

 

Spock blinked, then something seemed to click. “Ah. Leonard, I...”

 

“Shut it. I made reservations.”

 

Spock looked dubious. “I _have_ reservations.”

 

“And I don’t care. Get your shirt and pants on, and let’s go. Smart-casual, and easy to peel off again afterwards. _Git_.”

 

Spock paused a moment longer, then turned on his heel and retreated to the back of the apartment, leaving McCoy to inch through the gap and close the door behind him. He eyed the new so-called security chain with disgust. If _he_ could squirm through the gap, the damn chain was too long. _Far_ too long.

 

The apartment was, as usual, pristine, save for the upturned book on the couch (Nietzsche’s _The Gay Science_ , in a fit of pure irony. He probably had _Human, All Too Human_ lying around someplace as well) and, surprisingly, a sealed pharmacy paper bag on the coffee table, which he either hadn’t gotten around to putting away, or had uncharacteristically left out regardless. There was a half-drunk mug of either dark tea or coffee, and an empty wrapper belonging to – he nudged it over – a protein bar. Which meant he hadn’t gone for making dinner yet (or had planned to skip it, yet _another_ bad habit).

 

“Will this suffice?”

 

Spock re-emerged, the grey t-shirt replaced with a blue dress shirt and black slacks that, judging by the vague clutch around the crotch, were doing something sinful to his backside.

 

“You bet your ass it will,” McCoy grinned, crossing the room to kiss him (the mug was half-full of dark tea) and sneak a quick grope at said ass before backing up and gallantly offering his arm. “Your chariot awaits.”

 

“Your car is hardly a chariot.”

 

“Better than your bike in this weather.”

 

Spock declined to comment as he collected his jacket – a sleek, suit-like affair – from the hook, and his keys from the bowl, and locked up behind them.

 

“You need a shorter chain for the door.”

 

“Apparently so, as you were meant to wait _here_.”

 

“Yeah right,” McCoy sniped, using the privacy of the stairwell to keep an arm around Spock’s waist as long as possible. “As a warning: I brought a change of clothes. So don’t get too smart.”

 

“As you technically forced entry into my apartment, I fail to see why inviting you back poses a greater risk.”

 

“I didn’t force shit, your chain’s too long,” McCoy said, holding the door, and they stepped into the narrow gap of safety under the smokers’ overhang.

 

“Regardless, you entered without permission.”

 

“Better get used to it,” McCoy leered, unpeeling himself and turning his collar up. “Alright. On three.”

 

*

 

“ _Leonard_ ,” Spock said, the moment that McCoy turned into the parking lot.

 

“No complaints outta you until it’s over,” McCoy returned. “You don’t get to complain.”

 

Spock eyed the gleaming glass front of the restaurant dubiously. _Hanashoubu_ – or Hannah’s, as the locals tended to call it – was just about the only Japanese restaurant in the bay area that served halfway decent Japanese food. It served excellent Japanese food, in fact – and its prices reflected that.

 

“But...”

 

“Nope,” McCoy said, getting out of the car and hunching against the rain. The parking lot was a tad more sheltered, but the winter had stripped down the leaves from the overhanging trees, and so they stepped briskly into the shadow of the building, the wind hissing angrily at their escape.

 

“Leonard, really, this is not neces...”

 

“I know it ain’t,” McCoy shrugged as they brushed through the glass doors and were instantly confronted with an absolutely tiny Asian woman. “Dr. McCoy, table for two at eight thirty.”

 

“Of course,” she bobbed in a bow that made dwarves look tall, whipped a couple of menus off the station, and led them through the quiet-yet-full restaurant towards a quiet booth in a hidden alcove at the back, leaving them promptly to their own devices and snapping something at a passing waiter that made Spock’s mouth twitch.

 

“Leonard,” he tried again as they sat, and McCoy hooked his foot around Spock’s ankle, hidden by the long tablecloth.

 

“Just shut up and enjoy it,” he said. “Won’t happen again until next year anyhow.”

 

It took a little longer for Spock to apparently relax – though his starter of what looked like a squid flattened by a landing jumbo jet seemed to do the trick – but there was a distinct amusement he was drawing from the chatter of Japanese amongst the staff, and from McCoy’s half-hearted grumbling about the smell of fish. But he adamantly kept his hands to his own side of the table, and sidestepped their customary flirting rather than returning it with equal force; McCoy tucked both feet around Spock’s right ankle, and used it as a substitute. Hopefully it was merely the public setting.

 

“I gotta admit, I’m a little surprised,” he said in the lull between the main course(s) – given that apparently Asian people split up their meals into a thousand and one tiny bowls, or at least _this_ place did.

 

“About?”

 

“You,” he said. “You’re still damn Chinese...”

 

“Japanese.”

 

“...given that you’ve been living in America fuck-knows how long...”

 

“Approximately half of my life.”

 

“...now, and should be more or less totally naturalised...”

 

“It would be unfortunate, to be entirely American.”

 

“...but you’re not. You’re still very...” McCoy waved a hand. “Foreign.”

 

“And yet,” Spock noted, “my peers in Sendai always referred to me as being extremely American. I am a  foreigner in either country.”

 

“Well, you’re more of a Jap than I am.”

 

“...I would be highly amused to see the reaction of Sendai to you, Leonard,” Spock said, offering a very tiny smile over the top of his glass.

 

“And Georgia to you, darlin’,” McCoy grinned. “Hell, you’d be an alien in Dahlonega, what with your fancy science and _countin’_.”

 

Spock cocked his head. “You did not like Dahlonega?”

 

“Place is fine; people ain’t,” McCoy shrugged. “It’s too damn small. Atlanta – you can find the people worth your time in Atlanta. Go up into Chattahoochee, you don’t even need the people in the first place, jus’ you and nature. But Dahlonega itself – too small. I got out as a student and I wouldn’t go back for the world, even if California ain’t exactly brimmin’ with common sense.”

 

Spock’s lips twitched again.

 

“You don’t get men like you in Dahlonega,” McCoy said, and Spock ducked his head. “You can get plenty embarrassed if you want, but it’s true. Men like you are one in a million, and you get ten to a penny in Dahlonega, not one in a million.”

 

Spock frowned slightly. “Then why were you in Dahlonega?”

 

McCoy was brought up short – he blinked, thrown off, before his brain rebooted and he huffed out a laugh. “Slippery son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

 

“I am merely applying your own argument universally, and such an application provides that  question.”

 

“Well,” McCoy said. “I got outta Dahlonega. Does that count for somethin’?”

 

Spock dropped his gaze back to his glass, and leaned back as the waiter appeared with dessert.

 

“Perhaps everything, Leonard.”

 

*

 

It was almost midnight by the time McCoy pulled the car into the closest available space to the door, the rain still hammering down on the roof in a soothing counterpoint to the engine. He felt caught somewhere between the sleepy satisfaction of a long day, good food and better company, and the adrenalin buzz that he got from arguing with Spock (and there had been plenty of that when he’d paid for both of them, crushing Spock’s protests underfoot with all the skill that the medical profession offered in completely ignoring other people’s misgivings).

 

When he slipped free of his seatbelt and leaned over to kiss Spock in the darkness of the car, he could taste the argument on his lips.

 

“Shut it,” he growled. “What kind of a man would I be to let you pay for anything on your birthday?”

 

“Apparently, a wiser man with more disposable income,” Spock returned lowly, his fingers tucked warm and safe behind McCoy’s ear, keeping him close.

 

“Call it a present,” McCoy countered, briefly following the shadow of stubble before returning to that mouth. “Better’n some cheap gift you’ll hate and sell on the internet in the morning anyway.”

 

“Perhaps,” Spock allowed, threading those fingers further into his hair. “And it was a gift much appreciated, if overpriced.”

 

“No such thing for you,” McCoy returned, briefly rediscovering the taste of that odd, smoky tea Spock had had before the main course, and spreading the remnants of that taste over his own lips. It was nicer out of the cup.

 

“I was led to believe, however...”

 

Uh-oh.

 

“...that allowing one party to pay for the meal implied an unspoken contract that the other would submit to sexual intercourse later in the evening.”

 

McCoy snorted. “That’s an outdated and damn stupid custom.”

 

“And yet accurate. Your hand has not left my thigh for ten minutes.”

 

It hadn’t, but that was besides the point, and McCoy said as much, between multiple attempts at finding that sharp Japanese alcohol lingering at the back of Spock’s mouth.

 

“You brought a change of clothes.”

 

McCoy paused, and knew that Spock could read the answer in his face.

 

“You don’t owe me anythin’,” he said brusquely.

 

“No,” Spock agreed, his thigh rippling with movement under McCoy’s fingers before his knees parted slightly and he rocked his hip up into the hand. “But I do wish to prolong the evening, and express my thanks.”

 

McCoy struggled, his moral compass and his libido going to war (and not for the first time).

 

“After what you just said, the southerner in me ain’t happy,” he pointed out.

 

“The man in you is,” Spock returned, pressing his hand down on McCoy’s to curl them both around the growing erection in his slacks. That alone almost caused McCoy’s brain to short-circuit, and he groaned into another, distinctly messier kiss.

 

“You play damn dirty pool,” he breathed.

 

“Would you like to come up for coffee?”

 

“Your coffee's vile.”

 

“I am not offering coffee,” and Spock rocked his hips again, the slacks hiding nothing from McCoy’s well-placed hand.

 

“Oh God yes.”

 

The elevator was, for once, working; the enclosed space and the alcohol from dinner combined to let Spock bury his hands in McCoy’s hair and assault his tongue with single-minded concentration. The feel of that semi in his slacks was enticing enough – demanding enough – that McCoy kept a hand planted on the place where his leg met his buttock, locking him in place, groin-to-groin, and sucked out his air to keep him breathless enough to not think of escaping at least until they reached the right floor.

 

Getting into the apartment was a mess of fumbling hands and the rattle of keys before bursting into the small space and slamming the door unnecessarily loudly behind them. The bedroom was a mile away, over creaky floorboards and city lights through unshielded windows, and then McCoy was crashing down onto the mattress, Spock’s knees locked either side of his own, and the both of them breathing the same air.

 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he protested after another minute or two of heady, heavy kissing. “Back up, back up.”

 

Spock paused, blinking in the faint glow from the main road. “Leonard?”

 

McCoy rolled his shoulders. “I feel...vaguely like you’re...I don’t know. Like this is because I paid. Like I’ve paid for this.”

 

Spock stared down at him – then, quite unexpectedly, ripped his jacket open and liberated his wallet, smacking McCoy’s hands aside when he tried to prevent him. He deftly removed a twenty dollar bill before tossing the wallet away into the darkness of the room and sliding the bill into the back pocket of his pants.

 

“Now you have paid for this,” he said, and literally tore – _tore_ – McCoy’s shirt apart.

 

All thought of monetary compensation fled with the rake of his nails across McCoy’s chest, and the sudden surge of primal, _instinctive_ – not thought, but _action_. McCoy surged up to tackle him, tearing his own jacket free and clutching at skin and muscle and the sheer smell of him – and they inelegantly tumbled from the bed to the floor.

 

They did not return to it for some time.

 

*

 

“Leonard. _Leonard_.”

 

McCoy groaned, turned over – and squawked inelegantly as he nearly fell out of the bed.

 

Ah, yes. Spock’s. Spock’s ridiculously narrow bed.

 

“Chinese bastard,” he grumbled.

 

“Japanese,” Spock returned blandly from the doorway. He was half-dressed in a fresh pair of pants and an open white shirt, face freshly shaven, and the faint smell of coffee just about permeating the stink of sex that surrounded the bed. “I must go to work shortly.”

 

“Okay. Okay, I’m up. Fuck,” McCoy groaned, stretching and managing to untangle himself from the sheets. “Goddamn, you’re exhausting.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Smug fucker.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

“Where’re my pants?”

 

“In the main room. Would you like them?”

 

“Yeah, there’s some law about driving naked,” McCoy grumbled, kicking the tattered remains of his shirt aside and locating his underwear. He supposed that after that feral performance, he should count himself lucky they’d survived. “Good thing I brought a change of clothes. What the hell?”

 

“I surmised it would be an excellent way to distract you,” Spock replied, disappearing into the main room.

 

“Yeah, no shit,” McCoy grumbled, giving up on his socks. God only knew what had happened to them. “I think you’re technically a prostitute now.”

 

“Is a single client sufficient to warrant that status?”

 

“Hell if I know, but I’m twenty dollars poorer for it. You gotta be the cheapest damn hooker in the state.”

 

“More than that, if we include the meal,” Spock said, returning and tossing McCoy’s pants at him.

 

“Okay, a hundred and seventy dollars poorer for it,” McCoy said, catching them and snapping them out. “Still pretty cheap, given that I think I had a seizure in there somewhere.”

 

“Merely an orgasm, Leonard.”

 

“Merely, my ass.”

 

“That is very far from mere.”

 

“Yours ain’t so bad either, darlin’,” McCoy grinned crookedly at him as he ripped open his bag and located a fresh shirt. “Same time next year?”

 

“I would hope rather sooner than that,” Spock returned primly, retreating into the main room again. When McCoy followed, he was tying his laces on the couch. “I am quite happy to...pay for services rendered with more tonkatsu, if you so desire it.”

 

“My services are free, unlike some Chinese immigrants around here,” McCoy said, hefting his bag onto his shoulder and grabbing his coat. It had, judging by a glance out of the window, gone from bucketing it down to merely ordinary rain.

 

Halfway to the door, Spock’s hand shot out to clamp around his belt buckle, and suddenly they were nose-to-nose, and there was a hand slipping into his pants.

 

“Whoa, if you wanna get to work on...”

 

A crinkle sounded, and he glanced down at the twenty dollar bill suddenly tucked into the front of his pants.

 

“For such satisfactory nights, my services are also free.”

 

He stared at the calm, almost-smirking foreigner in front of him, then cracked a smile of his own.

 

“So if it’s ever shit, you’re gonna rob me?”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“Well, then. I better make sure I always fuck you stupid.”

 

Spock’s eyes darkened noticeably at the vulgarity, and McCoy leaned in to kiss his cheek daringly, reminiscent of that first date and the tricky son-of-a-bitch that had slipped out of his hands, quite literally.

 

“See you Monday, Spock. And bring a change of clothes.”


	31. Arc One, Part Thirty

“How much do you get paid?”

 

The movie playing on the box was irrelevant – or at least no contest given that Spock was mostly naked, warm under McCoy’s body on the couch, and nuzzling tiredly at his jaw. They had burst into the apartment an hour earlier, scattering their clothes liberally all over the living room, and hadn’t yet mustered up the energy to get dressed again. Spock had found enough modesty (misplaced, given that ass) to wriggle back into his boxers, but McCoy remained obnoxiously naked.

 

And paying lazy homage to Spock’s ear and the surrounding skin.

 

“Mm?”

 

“How much do you get paid?” McCoy repeated.

 

“Enough.”

 

“This tax year?”

 

“Approximately half of your own wage,” Spock said, pressing back into the cushions to eye McCoy’s face. “Why?”

 

McCoy grunted, exploring the hollow behind that ear.

 

“ _Why_?”

 

“Wonderin’. Hold still.”

 

Spock obediently stilled, fingers scratching lightly at McCoy’s elbow as McCoy continued his ministrations. “Wondering what?”

 

“Why you live in a shoebox when you get a decent salary.”

 

“Health insurance,” Spock said flatly, rubbing his cheek against McCoy’s and feeling the rasp of invisible stubble. McCoy’s beard was _tenacious_. “The company’s package is...limited.”

 

McCoy made a low grumbling noise and scraped his teeth idly over the earlobe.

 

“And my apartment is not a shoebox.”

 

“Looks like a shoebox to me.”

 

“Then your shoes must be excessively large,” Spock said dryly.

 

“Well, you know what they say about guys with big shoes,” McCoy snickered, shifting his hands to stroke over Spock’s ribs and leaning more of his body weight forward. The pressure was warm and secure, and Spock wriggled into it, rubbing his cheek against that stubble again. “Huh. S’rainin’ again.”

 

The first fat drops had begun to paint the open window above the sink; the sun had long since dropped out of the sky, and the neon orange of the city lights were blurring under the water.

 

“Close the window,” Spock murmured. “And put something on.”

 

“Why?” McCoy asked, even as he heaved himself off the couch – and the body on it – and padded to the window, everything on bold and unashamed display.

 

“Because I do not have the energy for you without anything on.”

 

McCoy snorted as his slammed the window, and toed his jeans over on the floor to find his boxers. “I’m fine with going down the corner store and buying a six pack of sports drinks to give you enough energy for me.”

 

“No thank you.”

 

“Or I could handle things so you don’t need any energy,” McCoy offered, slipping his underwear back on and slithering back onto the couch over Spock again. “Mm, that’s quite the bite mark.”

 

“Indeed,” Spock rolled his shoulder up into McCoy’s probing fingers, and blinked open dark eyes when they tracked over his pectoral. “Leonard?”

 

McCoy found the longest of the little scars on Spock’s torso – a thin white line maybe three inches across, stretching from his sternum up towards his collarbone – and licked along its path.

 

“How’d you get this?”

 

“Apparently, I fell on broken glass as a toddler. I cannot remember; we still lived in Singapore at the time.”

 

“Huh,” McCoy kissed it firmly and sat back on his heels to straddle Spock’s hips and find the others. There were about five in total, mostly thin and white with the exception of a blunt, dark mark over the abdominal wall. “That,” McCoy said, prodding it firmly, “was an appendectomy.”

 

“Yes,” Spock blinked sleepily at him. “I was nine.”

 

“What about these?” he traced two twinned lines, straight as railroad tracks, over the lowest ribs. They were small and fine, but felt savage under his fingertips, and he bent to kiss those too. They felt old, but the flesh was still torn in two; they had been deep injuries.

 

“An explosion in the lab when I was studying for my degree,” Spock stroked through his hair. “They were – are – not so bad as they looked.”

 

McCoy hummed and imprinted a light bruise over them with his teeth before moving to the final visible scar, a very thin line, not quite white but paler than the surrounding skin, embedded into the skin in the hollow of his left shoulder, tiny and barely-there. It felt, to his lips, like normal, smooth skin, and he lapped at it briefly before kissing up to the long neck and burying his nose there, testing the pulse and warmth of him.

 

“My mother’s cat.”

 

“Your mom’s _cat_?”

 

Spock flushed. “She did not like me. Unfortunately, my mother could not drive, so I had to take the cat to the vet for her shots.”

 

“Probably why she didn’t like you.”

 

“Indeed,” Spock breathed as McCoy settled properly and decided to pay attention to the other ear. “You are particularly tactile tonight.”

 

“That’s your fault,” McCoy said, ducking to kiss the collarbone as Spock shifted, and grinning into the skin when his head was trapped by Spock’s arms, folding him into that pale chest, and the hypocritical bastard began to kiss his hair. “No energy, my ass. I – what?”

 

Spock abruptly let go and relaxed back into the cushions, but when McCoy looked up, he didn’t look relaxed. In fact, as he sat back on his haunches (and Spock’s hips), the ribs under his hands were taut, and Spock’s face even tighter.

 

“Spock?”

 

Spock opened his mouth soundlessly for a moment, and then suddenly a shallow, hoarse rasp escaped and his lungs jumped.

 

“Bedside table?” McCoy demanded, and when Spock nodded, he was up and gone in an instant, his medical training taking over. He knew the noises, he knew the colours – hell, he could probably guess at the exact dosage in the immediate reliever – and his training brutally forced out any personal anxiety and hesitance.

 

The bedside drawer rattled when he jerked it open, and three different coloured inhalers lay neatly side by side on top of two packets of pills, a bottle of iron supplements (go figure) and a tray of vials for the nebuliser that he wasn’t yet allowed to see. He seized the immediate, shook the canister sharply to listen to the room inside, and slammed the drawer again, turning on his heel.

 

Spock had sat up, and was sitting rigidly on the couch, back moulded to the cushions and face tight and strained as he breathed – shallow, rasping and _thin_ – through clenched teeth. He wordlessly wrapped his fingers around the presented inhaler and brought it to his lips, and McCoy settled beside him to squeeze his other hand and rub at his shoulder.

 

“Relax,” he coaxed. “Just try and relax, sweetheart. Don’t clench up so bad, you’ll only make it worse.”

 

Spock’s fingers were trembling in his, and McCoy frowned. He hadn’t been deprived that long, and – the exhale, when it came, was long, slow and smooth.

 

His face, though, was a picture of pure misery.

 

“It’s alright,” McCoy murmured, kissing his temple as he brought the inhaler up for the second dose. “Relax. It’s just me.”

 

“I am... _aware_...” he rasped, his throat seizing.

 

“So why’re you so tense?”

 

Spock’s jaw tightened and he finally took that second dose, the inhalation sounding almost angry.

 

“What set you off? My hair?”

 

A tense nod.

 

“Huh. Musta been the shampoo.” McCoy worked an arm around Spock’s lower back and rubbed at his side. His breathing had eased, though the muscular tension was still there. “I’ll grab a shower in a minute and overlay it with yours. Then we can get back on track.”

 

“Then go.”

 

“Not until you relax,” he returned tartly, still rubbing his fingers in circles. “You’re fine. And you can wipe that self-disgust off your face, too, you ain’t got nothing to be ashamed of.”

 

Spock pursed his lips momentarily, and McCoy squeezed his hand. After a moment, the pressure was returned, and the tension began to finally inch out of his frame. His breaths were shallow, but steady, and the wheezing had tapered off entirely after a further ten seconds or so.

 

“There y’go,” McCoy murmured, and leaned over to kiss him. He tasted of stale medication and the apple he’d been eating when McCoy had picked him up from the gym earlier in the evening. “Right, I’m gonna jump in your shower. And at some point, you’re gonna have to feed me. It’s gettin’ late.”

 

Spock nodded, and caught McCoy’s hand again as he moved to rise.

 

“Thank you,” he said.

 

McCoy squeezed his fingers, and smiled.

 

*

 

In the middle of December, and on one of his Fridays both jobless and Jo-less, Spock texted in the morning with the news that there had been a chemical leak at work and so they had all been told to stay at home until Monday morning, so would McCoy like to spend the day together?

 

'The day together' turned, by one o'clock that afternoon, into a half-doze in McCoy's bed, curled together in rumpled sheets and sexual exhaustion. Spock had come over by way of his bike and leathers, and when McCoy had unzipped him in the hall, had been so cold that McCoy had proposed life-saving techniques and warmed him up. Thoroughly. Twice.

 

What had McCoy's attention as Spock dozed on his shoulder, however, was the crumpled and abandoned pair of slacks that he'd stripped off Spock's hips in the bedroom doorway. They had fallen in a flat heap, and the pale plastic of one of the inhalers had rolled free onto the carpet.

 

He should - he really should - pry himself free and hide it again and pretend like he'd never seen it. Spock did so much better when McCoy didn't notice - or didn't let slip that he had - and yet...McCoy liked the lazy proof. He liked the slip on Spock's part, because he would never do it if McCoy didn't know, and if he didn't...

 

Perhaps trust was too strong, just yet, but it was maybe getting there. Slowly.

 

Spock stirred sleepily when McCoy kissed his hair, and made a questioning grumble.

 

"We should go shopping this afternoon," McCoy insisted quietly. "If I don't get a good quality bottle for Joss for Christmas, Jo'll harp on at me about it until Valentine's Day, and I won't get a moment's peace."

 

"I _was_ having a moment's peace," Spock grumbled, digging his nose briefly into McCoy's armpit in stubborn resistance before allowing McCoy to peel him off and kiss him. "Why do I have to go?" he asked petulantly as McCoy slid from the warmth and reached for his jeans. He had a scratch on his thigh, and gave Spock a dirty look at the discovery.

 

"Because I like hanging you off my arm and parading that nobody else can have what I've got," McCoy replied, throwing his shirt at him. "Put your clothes on and move, you lazy bastard."

 

He picked up the inhaler; Spock moved like lightning to take it back and don his slacks again and hide it, tucking it away in the darkness like a secret - but when McCoy reached to kiss him again, the attention was returned, and when he tapped the plastic and murmured an approval, Spock _almost_ smiled.


	32. Arc One, Part Thirty-One

Last Christmas had been – not good. McCoy couldn’t remember most of it. He could remember the Boxing Day hangover, and turning up for a shift he hadn’t been assigned just so he’d have something to _do_ and not think about being so goddamn _alone_...

 

This Christmas...

 

It started off just about right, his phone going off at six o’clock in the morning and his eardrum near as damn it being blown out by a shrieking little girl, to whom he had to explain a decent nine times that _yes_ , it was Christmas, and _yes_ they would have their own Christmas tomorrow and _yes_ , she did need to brush her teeth because chocolate didn’t stop causing cavities just because Santa had dropped by, and _yes_ he’d remembered to visit Daddy too.

 

Not to rain on his little girl’s parade, but he _knew_ she wasn’t up to dialling his cell number yet. Joss, apparently, was sadistic even on Christmas Day.

 

He dropped the phone onto the floor (he didn’t have the coordination to manage the bedside table) and yawned wide enough to loosen his own fillings, idly scratching at his balls, wondering even more idly where his boxers had gone, and then deciding _fuck it_ and turning back over.

 

Halfway through the turn, he caught sight of the blue plastic on the other end table, and groaned into the pillow. He then discovered he’d been drooling in his sleep again, tossed the pillow aside in exchange for the other one, and reached for his phone again.

 

_You’ve left your blue one here._

The other pillow was cold, and it smelled too strongly of laundry detergent, so he retrieved the damp one and flipped it over, resettling into his own body heat luxuriously. He could do with a piss, but it could wait ten minutes. Typically, he only realised he was dozing when his phone trilled and _I have a spare; go to sleep_ flashed up at him.

 

He did as he was told.

 

*

 

Half past twelve found McCoy up, showered, dressed, and his wayward boxers at the bottom of the bed. He had carefully shaved to avoid looking like he’d just rolled out of bed, but not fully clean-shaven, because Spock might _think_ he hadn’t noticed, but apparently Chinese (whatever) guys had a real thing for stubble, and he planned on taking advantage later. His contributions to the festivities – namely, clinking bottles of various kinds of booze – were lined up on the kitchen table, and he had just grabbed his jacket off the banisters when the now-familiar (when had he become attuned to the sound of it?) grumbling purr of Spock’s motorcycle inched into range.

 

He set the carrier bags of booze in the hall and stepped down to the driveway as the bike pulled up, grinning against the cold as Spock killed the engine and removed his helmet.

 

“Merry Christmas,” he murmured, pressing both hands down onto leather-clad thighs to keep him where he was astride the bike, and kissing him, tasting red wine, toothpaste, and the very faint mist of medication under both.

 

When he drew back, Spock touched a finger lightly to his stubble, and scrutinised his eyes.

 

“You are...”

 

“Optimistic?”

 

“Prepared.”

 

McCoy smirked, and kissed him again, quicker and sharper. “Gotta be, with you, or you’d have my ass.”

 

“Literally.”

 

“Not a chance, darlin’,” he returned easily. “You gonna peel outta them leathers for me early?”

 

“I will remove them, yes, but you are not getting anywhere until after the festivities,” Spock said almost primly, swinging off the bike fluidly and stepping up onto the porch as though he belonged there. “I have to cook at Jim’s Christmas parties, and I need no additional distractions.”

 

McCoy chuckled, kicking the door shut behind him and running his hands down over that ass before it was moved out of reach and Spock began to strip out of the leathers in the middle of McCoy’s hall.

 

“How much wine you had?”

 

“One glass,” Spock said. “Approximately two hours ago. I was quite fit to drive.”

 

McCoy shrugged, reaching again once those biceps were revealed and skirting his fingers under the t-shirt and over a flat stomach. “A Buddhist celebratin’ Christmas, huh?”

 

“Indeed.”

 

“How’d that happen?”

 

“My mother introduced me to the concept. Neil introduced me to the celebration of the concept.”

 

“Uh-huh,” McCoy curled his hands and drew Spock back in to nuzzle his ear and roll his teeth over the lobe. “What’d you and Neil do for Christmas?”

 

“Typically, drink copious amounts of alcohol and proceed to have somewhat unsatisfying intercourse on the kitchen floor.”

 

“Mm, I don’t know about that,” McCoy said, sliding his hands into the back of Spock’s jeans and kneading. “I don’t wanna lose twenty bucks for doing a poor job.”

 

“Then you had better do a good one,” Spock said, smoothly removing the wandering hands and stepping back.

 

“No problem,” McCoy smirked. “And I’m pretty sure I can muster up a whole bed, too. I know how to treat my things. You gone a step up in the world with me, darlin’.”

 

“Even as you call me a thing,” Spock noted, reaching in a surprisingly affectionate gesture to kiss him on the cheek and stroke a hand along his jaw. “We must go, or Jim will come to find out what it is taking so long.”

 

“Maybe it’d teach him to knock.”

 

“I rather doubt it,” Spock said, opening the front door again and leaving McCoy to grab their coats and the bags of booze.

 

But it got him a great view crossing the street, so it was fine.

 

*

 

Jim had been at the alcohol longer than either of them – he rarely went so far as to hug McCoy (“you’re too much of a grumpy fucker!”) but did so on their arrival, and attempted to get in a sneaky grope of Spock’s ass before McCoy batted his hand away with a stern, “ _No_!” that had Jim’s long-suffering lodger, Sulu, snickering into his glass.

 

“But it’s _Christmas_ ,” Jim protested.

 

“But I don’t care,” McCoy replied.

 

Spock had set himself up in the kitchen. McCoy was amused to note he’d brought his own ingredients for more or less everything, apparently not trusting Jim’s storage facilities (although McCoy probably wouldn’t trust much out of Jim’s fridge either) enough to make use of their contents. It seemed to be a good middle-ground; Spock was not _shy_ , exactly, but he was certainly not sociable, and many of Jim’s louder, more exuberant friends had come for the first half of the celebrations and would be returning to their own homes before dinner – McCoy encountered half the staff of _Harry’s_ betting their New Year shifts on the results of Jim’s video games, and several giggling blonde girls making quiet plans in the study to corner any of the men (and McCoy was disturbed to overhear his own name being dropped) under the mistletoe before leaving.

 

(He checked. There was no mistletoe in the kitchen.)

 

If Jim was an idiot, he was a good host, at the very least, circling the rooms and taking the time for everyone, snickering over a leftover bruise on McCoy’s neck and defying social convention and obnoxiously slapping Spock’s ass in passing on his way to the fridge. He stole Sulu’s drinks more than once, the girls he was attempting to chat up more than _twice_ , and ended up, by mid-afternoon, cross-legged on the living room floor like a little kid, battling a gym buddy (something-or-other Mitchell) at Mario Kart. His flighty jubilance kept the general upbeat atmosphere going – warmth, friendship, and an edge of mockery surrounded by the smell of cooking and, every time Sulu entered the kitchen, the low cadence of Japanese.

 

It was perhaps four or five when the casual friends and acquaintances began to drift away – the giggling girls, every one of whom had probably experienced Jim Kirk the Ride, and the dark-haired Mitchell in their perfumed wake, and Gaila of the red hair and flirtatious wink, out the door in a blur of fur coat and curls, leaving Jim looking slightly floored from the kiss on the cheek she had graced him with.

 

They gathered in the kitchen thereafter, Spock flitting between cooking and texting someone called Nyota on his cell (the name rang a bell, but McCoy couldn't remember) and Jim flitting between his seventh refill of the day and attempting to draw Sulu back into a gaming war. Leaning on the counter, McCoy felt the crinkle and found a phone number scribbled on a receipt from a dodgy downtown pharmacy, the zeros drawn as hearts and the whole thing written in lipstick.

 

“Teresa,” Sulu said helpfully, and McCoy tossed it.

 

“You should keep it,” Jim said. “Teresa’s a great lay.”

 

“So’s he,” McCoy said, jerking a thumb at Spock, and Jim scowled.

 

“Low blow, man,” he said. “Just _once_? One time? _Please_?”

 

“No, and catch,” Spock ordered, and tossed a sliver of turkey.

 

Jim was, McCoy reflected, rather dog-like in his reaction to flying food, managing to somehow actually catch it in his mouth, and then look insufferably pleased. It kept his trap _shut_ for precious seconds, though, and McCoy wound an arm around Spock’s hips and kissed him when he shifted within range.

 

Jim made a noise.

 

“You’re all loved-up and disgusting,” Sulu translated.

 

“Not yet I’m not,” McCoy returned easily, and found a chunk of turkey shoved between his teeth as well; Spock was well into passive-aggressive mode, and he wisely refrained from trying for any more affection until the meal was actually _done_.

 

When they sat down to it – it struck McCoy as possibly the oddest Christmas dinner he’d ever had. A turkey, cooked to perfection by a man who claimed to have been vegetarian his entire life; the entire company a little tipsy (or more) but the mood none the worse for it in the style than drunken family occasions tended to have; no blood relations anywhere at the table, and yet the same easy acceptance and understanding.

 

For a sharp moment, he wished – _desperately_ wished – that Spock would recognise that acceptance and draw on it more strongly, and then Jim was popping the cork on yet another bottle and the spell was broken with food and alcohol and the childish sputter and burst of crackers that Sulu had dug out of God only knew _where_.

 

This had become, somehow, home.


	33. Arc One, Part Thirty-Two

On New Year’s Eve, Joss took Jo up to Portland to celebrate with Joss’s sister’s family, and so McCoy was suddenly left surprisingly free. They normally tried to make nice for a few hours on New Year’s Eve, to put up a united front for Jo again and work on keeping their fractured family civil for another year. And while he couldn’t begrudge her the opportunity – Joss’s sister was in the Navy, and often abroad, and Jo hadn’t even met two of her cousins yet because it had been so long – he felt at a loose end in a strange, lonely way.

 

Oddly, it was Jim who invited him to the SynTech New Year party, not Spock – McCoy rather got the impression Spock was still trying to evade the combination of Jim and Chris Pike and not go at all – a few days before the event over a beer in _Harry’s_ and waiting for a pool table to free up.

 

“It’s a good bash,” Jim shrugged. “The first five drinks are free, and they usually chuck in an extra free glass of champagne if enough projects got patented. I think Spock mentioned they’d hit the threshold this year.”

 

“Why are you going?” McCoy asked. “You left...”

 

“Yeah, but I stayed in touch,” Jim shrugged. “They’re nice people. It’s,” he flushed, “nice to talk to people who don’t think I’m as dumb as I look occasionally. Plus,” he recovered a little of the bounce, “Helen still works in the drug manufacturing lab, and she’s _hot_. Hey,” he raised his voice, and McCoy twisted to see Spock entering the bar, unzipping his leather jacket as he approached. “Spock, tell Bones how hot Helen at SynTech is.”

 

“She is undoubtedly attractive,” Spock allowed, and McCoy pinched his arm. “I see no point in lying, Leonard.”

 

“Want a drink?” Jim waved his empty bottle. “First round’s on me.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

McCoy barely waited until Jim had left the table before saying, “Where?”

 

Spock touched his jacket lightly as he folded it over the back of the closest chair and sat down. “What is going on?”

 

“He’s trying to talk me into going to the SynTech New Year thing.”

 

“He is trying to talk me into the same.”

 

“We could, you know,” McCoy suggested. “It’d keep your sponsor happy if you went, the free booze’ll keep me happy, then we can get a cab back to my place and spend New Year in bed.”

 

Spock eyed him and said, “Neil typically still attends the New Year party.”

 

“How about if I promise not to punch Neil?” McCoy offered. “Plus, you know how I get when your ex is around.”

 

“Aggressive?”

 

McCoy pinched his arm again. “ _Good_.”

 

“I must admit to that much,” Spock agreed.

 

“C’mon,” McCoy grinned, leaning closer. “Lose twenty dollars in the early hours of the New Year? Sounds like a good way to start to me.”

 

Spock offered him an unreadable look, and tilted his head. “It does.”

 

“Is that a yes?” McCoy asked as Jim returned and shot them a funny look.

 

“Very well.”

 

“What?” Jim prodded, pushing Spock’s Asahi toward him across the table. “What’d I miss?”

 

“We’ll come and take some free booze from SynTech,” McCoy shrugged, and Jim grinned.

 

“You totally used sex as a bribe.”

 

The look Spock gave Jim was nothing short of murderous.

 

*

 

The SynTech New Year party was nothing like the dignified annual work party that Spock had conned him into attending the previous summer. For a start, the sedate chatter of scientists with potential sponsors was gone. For another, there was an actual bar in the rented clubhouse with a far better selection of booze, and the promised first-five-free that Jim had boasted about in _Harry's_. For yet another, it seemed to be scientists-only (and scientists' families, friends, drinking buddies, and old college classmates with less luck than them in the employment-and-free-booze department). And, for the last part, every single one of them was drunk.

 

It was definitely more McCoy's kind of party.

 

He was pleasantly surprised to discover that while Spock's tolerance for beers, ales and lagers was very good, his tolerance for wine was less so, and so McCoy kept plying him with large glasses of some cheap red stuff that tasted fizzy and sharp on the back of his mouth when he caught him in a dark corner by the toilets for ten minutes around ten o'clock. Spock's sponsor, Pike, had indeed shown up with a sharp-tongued, dark-haired woman who took one look at Jim and demanded to know why the company was still afloat if it had ever employed a hick like him. (McCoy liked her, whoever she was.) And Jim, far from being annoyed at the accusation, had bought her a healthily large bottle of imported beer, dared to kiss her on the cheek, and had darted off to flirt with the promised Helen from the drug manufacturing lab.

 

Spock was more sociable with a few glasses of the good stuff in him, and drifted apparently aimlessly from cluster to cluster to speak with various colleagues about various things, including golf at one memorable point, despite harbouring a deep-seated dislike of the 'completely pointless and athletically pathetic' game. (McCoy had thoroughly enjoyed _that_ conversation.) Most of those colleagues were typical scientists and uninterested in the boyfriend that came and went; a couple were more gossipy, with one woman well into her own good stuff demanding to know whether they had ever tried bondage, and if not, why not. (He was later reliably informed that Amelia Epstein was like that whether she was drunk or not.) One woman told McCoy that he didn't look very gay, which, when relayed to Jim, nearly caused the confirmed hick to drown in his beer. But the prize had to go to the man who calmly added two and two to get four without a word, turned to the aforementioned Epstein, and said, "Told you he had a stick up his ass."

 

Drink and scientists wasn't a good mix, apparently, but it was a goddamn hilarious one.

 

McCoy had spent most of the party, when not stealing kisses from an increasingly tipsy Spock or bringing more wine to ensure that slightly tipsy stayed that way, talking to Pike. Pike had apparently been wounded in action during his time in the military (he wasn't specific, but McCoy guessed that that was the reason for the cane and the unusual interest in a medical field of which he had no professional interest or knowledge) and had a lot of derogatory things to say about the healthcare system in California, most of which McCoy had to agree with. Still, the debate had brewed in a satisfying manner over their drinks, even though Pike still carried an air of being the man in the charge and McCoy felt vaguely daring about arguing, like a kid talking back to Dad for the first time. It had been a satisfying couple of hours, and even without the hilarity of Spock's drunk colleagues or the opportunities to steal kisses from an unusually relaxed partner, McCoy would have found the party at least vaguely worthwhile for that minor argument alone.

 

And then the ginger had walked in.

 

At about quarter to midnight, McCoy first spotted the shock of red hair among the gathering, and had broken away from Pike without a word to hunt down Spock. He had eventually promised not to sock McKenna in the jaw if he did show up, but he had also decided without Spock's input that if McKenna were going to be in the vicinity, so was McCoy. And judging by the way McKenna slid from group to group with that wide, charming smile in place, the ginger was on the hunt again. McCoy had every intention of catching _first_.

 

He successfully caught Spock by the buffet table, and stole a samosa for himself before sliding a hand into the back pocket of Spock's jeans and grinning at the blurry, indignant look he received. He'd had enough to not actively wrench himself free and give McCoy a look that promised no sex for the imposition; he hadn't had enough to not care at all.

 

"You are manhandling me," Spock accused, and McCoy swallowed the food.

 

"No," he removed the paper plate and situated his other hand in the other back pocket. "This is manhandling."

 

"Ah," Spock said, resting his hands on McCoy's chest, most likely for convenience's sake. His pupils were wide with alcohol (and McCoy liked to think a little bit of lust) but not yet glassy. After a pause, he leaned in and kissed McCoy simply on the lips, a brief touch of wine and warmth.

 

"Mm," McCoy squeezed his ass warningly when Spock tried to wriggle free. "That's more like it. That's why I manhandle you; you like it."

 

"I said nothing about liking it. It is simply easier than fighting you at every turn."

 

"That's your excuse," McCoy kissed him again, investigating, and said, "Who bought you champagne?" He'd stolen Spock's wallet at the beginning of the party, insisting on it being a late Christmas present, and thus buying his coming and going ticket safely.

 

"Jim. He is..."

 

"Wasted?"

 

"Yes."

 

McCoy grinned. "We'll have to pile him in the cab with us later, then."

 

"I think Dr. Noel is piling him in her bed later," Spock confessed, and kissed him again, almost randomly. They were fairly short, chaste kisses, but it was still a very long way from what McCoy was usually allowed in crowds.

 

"I'll have a bit more o' that, if you don't mind. Countdown's startin' in a couple minutes."

 

"And that is important because?"

 

"Starts the new year off on the right foot," McCoy said, still refusing to let him go. "Sets the tone an' all that."

 

"Superstition."

 

"Yeah, but it involves manhandlin' you, so I'm all for it."

 

Spock struggled with that momentarily, and then seemed to see the logic in McCoy's position, for his long fingers were suddenly stroking at the back of his neck, and his teeth were tugging at McCoy's bottom lip.

 

Somewhere in the kissing, McCoy felt eyes on him, and peered through his eyelashes past Spock to the party that they had almost forgotten. The countdown was beginning on a screen, and the chanting was getting louder, and Pike was giving the sharp-tongued woman another tongue to play with by the bar - but watching _them_ over a thin flute of champagne was McKenna, eyes narrowed.

 

With breaking the kissing, McCoy removed one hand from the back pocket of Spock's jeans, flipped McKenna off, and returned it to the small of Spock's back.

 

 _I win_ , he thought uncharitably, and figured that maybe he hadn't left those caveman ancestors very far behind.

 

"I felt that," Spock murmured into his mouth, and McCoy laughed, kissing the end of the last word away.

 

"Shut up and go with it," he said.

 

The new year broke; 2002 began, and McCoy was right where he wanted to be. **  
**


	34. Arc One, Part Thirty-Three

McCoy woke to the now-familiar hollow hiss of an inhaler, and followed the shifting warmth to a pair of lean shoulders, curling back against the flushed-warm skin and rubbing his stubble against one blade like a cat. The skin between those shoulders was warm and soft and felt surprisingly delicate; the run of spine under his cheek wriggled as he rubbed, and there was a faint murmur from somewhere else in the bed.

 

“M’nin’,” he mumbled, and was answered with a second hiss and the clatter of an inhaler being dropped back on the bedside table. “’Kay?”

 

“Yes,” Spock shifted back into his hold, and McCoy took the opportunity to lazily explore, stroking his hands up through chest hair and whipcord muscle, rubbing briefly under the collarbone, before smoothing back and playing with the sharp edges of a hip further down. “You are...particularly tactile.”

 

“Mhmm.”

 

“You are also incoherent.”

 

“Mm.”

 

Spock seemed to give up on getting a response, turning over and twisting further into McCoy’s arms to press his head back into the pillows and situate himself close enough that they breathed the same air, the faint smell of medication hanging between them briefly. McCoy looped an arm over his back to drag him closer, and rubbed a foot experimentally up the back of a long calf, stroking the back of the knee with his toes. They were a tangled mess, and more or less everything could be reached somehow. They were _warm_ , importantly, unlike the cold, slimy-wet-towel feel that had been hanging in the air since New Year’s Day, and McCoy was more than simply reluctant to move.

 

“Day s’it?”

 

“It is Saturday morning.”

 

It was official. He _wasn’t_ moving.

 

“G’d. N’w’rk.”

 

McCoy could _feel_ Spock staring at him, and grunted, tugging him a hair closer and twisting to burrow his nose into a warm neck. His pulse was barely twitching in his jugular; it was so slow as to be sleeping, relaxed and content and familiar. He might not know the numbers, but he knew the beat of Spock's resting pulse.

 

“G’t’sleep,” he yawned, rubbing his stubble against the nearest edge of collarbone and receiving an especially nice squirm for it. He’d have to remember that.

 

An arm curled about the bottom of his ribs, long fingers splaying themselves over his side, and he smiled, kissing the slow heartbeat and feeling the murmur of contentment through the skin rather than truly hearing it. The fingers fluttered and stilled again – after a moment, there was a ripple of movement and a pair of lips pressed a kiss into his temple, barely-there and light.

 

He suppressed the smile, and feigned sleep.

 

*

 

It was late February; it had only taken five months since discovering the asthma to persuade Spock to at least allow McCoy within a hundred yards of the clinic for his almost-monthly injections and check-up.

 

It had been a hell of a row, but McCoy had just barely won it.

 

He had to wait in the car. He wasn't allowed to come into the building with Spock, never mind the actual consultation room, but it was a lot closer than he'd been expecting to wrestle out of that battle so soon, and so he didn't mind. He took the opportunity to sneak into the clinic once Spock was definitely in with the asthma nurse and steal a handful of leaflets on home care for asthmatics, and tips on helping for friends and family. He'd have to hide them, or Spock would have kittens and refuse to let him within a hundred _miles_ , but it was a job well done.

 

He laughed at the angry expression when Spock slid back into the car, though, unable to help himself, and said: "Don't like needles?"

 

"Needles are perfectly acceptable," Spock said frostily, rubbing his upper arm like a furious child. "The woman that wielded them on this occasion, however..."

 

"Slam them in like she was a javelin thrower?"

 

"No. She opted to do it _slowly_."

 

McCoy winced. There was no injection more painful than one done slowly. Stab it in and yank it out was a much better option. "Must have been a new nurse."

 

"Or a sadist," Spock grumbled.

 

"You'll want a sweet next for being brave," McCoy mocked, and Spock lashed out to punch him in the arm. " _Ow_. Sweet Jesus, al _right_. How about we start at the north end of the precinct and stop by the bakery for cookies?"

 

Spock had a surprising sweet tooth for soft-dough cookies, McCoy had discovered a week into the new year, and he ruthlessly exploited it now whenever he could. Spock didn't seem to mind, and murmured an agreement before putting the new prescription leaflet into the glove compartment.

 

"We'll stop at the pharmacy and fill that on the way home," McCoy offered casually.

 

"Which home?"

 

"Mine," he said. "Jim texted while you were in there. Sulu's got family coming over so he's getting kicked out and proposes pizza and a movie in my living room."

 

Spock looked like he was considering as McCoy put the car in the gear and peeled away from the clinic, and said, "Very well," as they joined the traffic heading into the city centre. One of the perks of McCoy's job was that he had a parking pass for one of the major parking lots just outside of their favourite shopping precinct, and he exploited that even more than Spock's cookie fetish. He _hated_ public transport in San Francisco. He hated _people_ in San Francisco, period. No need to add to it by using the public transport.

 

"I'll run you home tonight," he added. "I know you didn't bring enough pills for two days."

 

Spock said nothing to that, unsurprisingly, but it was a far cry from the fights that had spotted those first few weeks after McCoy had worked it out, and the peace was not such a fragile one. It was still a long uphill battle, but McCoy was beginning to think that he could maybe seen the crest of the hill at the top. Maybe.

 

"You're gonna get diabetes from those cookies, you know," he warned.

 

Spock offered a small smile. "I know."

 

McCoy laughed, and turned into the network that made up the downtown area, joining the queue for his favoured parking lot and reaching for the token on the dashboard.

 

Approaching the gate, Spock's hand curled into his elbow and squeezed lightly before letting go. He didn't say a word, and McCoy didn't ask.

 

He had the feeling that he already knew.

 

*

 

“Goddamn, it’s cold,” McCoy grumbled as they stepped out of the store into the shopping precinct, hunching his shoulders against the icy wind and jamming his hands into his pockets. “ _Damn_. You still need to get that book?”

 

“Yes,” Spock never did anything so normal as to hunch against the wind, but a faint flush was beginning to creep into his nose and cheeks against the harsh weather. It looked...kind of weird, actually. “If it is too cold, however...”

 

“Nah, I won’t freeze in the next twenty minutes,” McCoy grumbled, dodging around an obnoxious woman with a stroller. “But there’s a bottle of bourbon back home with my name on it.”

 

“If it is in your house, then metaphorically, yes.”

 

“Do you have a degree in smartassery?”

 

“No,” Spock said blankly. “I have a degree in biotechnology.”

 

“Oh my God, I’m dating the most pedantic man in the universe,” McCoy muttered.

 

"I believe that prize must go to Richard Dawkins."

 

"That mouthy atheist?" McCoy mused. "Nah, he's just a lippy bastard."

 

"Ah, I see. More like you than I, then?"

 

McCoy snorted. "I _believe_ in God, thank you very much."

 

"No, you believe in free food to mark familial occasions, rampant blasphemy, and contravening almost all of the ten commandments. Your belief in any specific God is so loose as to be unreal."

 

McCoy laughed aloud at that. Most people preferred to tiptoe around politics and religion; Spock waded knee-deep and proceeded to shoot the fish in the proverbial barrel.

 

"I believe something created the universe."

 

"As do I, just not a supernatural something with any interest in my life."

 

"Why would he be? You're Buddhist."

 

"Roughly as Buddhist as you are Christian."

 

"You're vegetarian," McCoy pointed out, dodging around a small army of teenagers with tiny bicycles that seemed a bit pointless.

 

"And you celebrate Christmas; what is your point?"

 

"Touché," McCoy snickered, hunching his shoulders against another blast of wind through the narrow street. "As do you, may I point out."

 

"Of course," Spock said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe, and McCoy wished they were alone. That holier-than-thou voice was like a match to kindling; he wanted to grab him right now, and he'd get a slap for it in the middle of the shopping district.

 

"You're one of those big bang theory, evolution-toting eggheads, aren't you?"

 

"If you are about to confess to being a creationist, then we are over," Spock warned, probably only half-joking.

 

"I thought you were meant to be big on tolerance?"

 

"Tolerance of differing beliefs, not outright idiocy."

 

McCoy snickered, imagining what his momma would say to being called an idiot by a mixed-race, non-American Buddhist who worked in medical research. "What if I believed in intelligent design?" he asked, coughing when a woman sailed past in a cloud of perfume. “Jesus, she musta bathed in that. What if I – what?”

 

He stopped when Spock’s finger and thumb caught his coat sleeve at the elbow, and turned. Spock was...not frowning, but the placid expression had been replaced with something McCoy was coming to recognise as disquiet, at the very least.

 

“Spock?”

 

He shifted, glancing about the precinct, before stepping back and ducking into a small alleyway between two of the stores, slipping into the shadows as skilfully as any thief. McCoy followed, the confusion clearing when Spock hunched his upper body over his own hands and drew the still somewhat unfamiliar plastic from his pocket.

 

“Oh,” he said, and Spock’s shoulders hunched in tighter. He rubbed a hand over the closer arch as the first rasp hit his ears. “Okay. Come on, don’t lean over like that. Straighten up a bit, c’mon.”

 

Spock did as he was told, eyes closed and jaw tense, and McCoy stepped between him and the street to block the light – and the view – a little better, laying his other hand over his stomach and judging the aborted flex of exhalation.

 

“You think you’re gonna go?”

 

Spock took another dose and stilled entirely for a long, long minute, before breathing out slowly and shaking his head. His ribs still felt somewhat clenched.

 

“I...apologise,” he whispered.

 

“Don’t,” McCoy said flatly. “You’re doin’ the right thing. S’all I ever wanted from you.”

 

Spock cracked a very faint smile, giving in finally to McCoy’s arm and sliding into the offered embrace, tucking his face into the collar of McCoy’s coat and taking very careful, measured breaths. “You often want intercourse.”

 

“Well, not right now,” McCoy agreed. “How you doin’?”

 

“Better,” Spock murmured, and McCoy kissed the chill skin of his forehead.

 

“Thank you,” he murmured there, and he felt the frown.

 

“For what?”

 

“Trustin’ me,” he said quietly. “I know you don’t like doin’ it in public, and I know you ain’t comfortable yet – but thank you. For tryin’.”

 

After a moment, the frown eased again, and Spock turned fully into the embrace, his arms coming up to return it – one hand still clutching the plastic under the fingers. And for the first time, McCoy was sure. They could do it.

 

They could do this.


	35. Arc One, Part Thirty-Four

That April had broken bitter, cold with a heavy, dank fog hanging off the sky and smothering the city, clinging to the surfaces and rubbing its polluted filth on the glass, smearing its ugly way over everything. But it had been a step up, yet again, from the dreary wet of February and the icy sleet of March that had taken an eternity to lift. The depression of March had permeated everything – it had bled through the walls of Spock’s apartment to that night they spent sitting on the floor by the front door, McCoy’s arm around his shoulders and the phone in his hand, ready to call the ambulance if there was just one more hitch, just one more...there had been an argument in the parking lot of the asthma clinic two days later, and for a terrible moment, McCoy had been _convinced_ that Spock was about to cry or hit him, or both, and he’d wanted nothing more than to take back whatever it was he’d said and make it all go away.

 

But he wasn’t God. He couldn’t make things just go away.

 

Time passed; time always did, and when April dawned (though the weather didn’t change for a while) the leaky exhaustion of March sank with the winter, and on the evening of the second, Spock kissed him outside his apartment building, and had blithely ignored the indignant squawk from a neighbour. April brought the early traces of spring, and the abandonment of their gloves in favour of bare hands – and the sensation that they’d weather this and be alright.

 

It had dawned with Jo’s very first broken bone (and to McCoy’s eternal pride, gained from falling out of a tree in true McCoy fashion), and the first forty-eight-hour callout in just about six years at work, and the intense amusement of hearing Spock swear for the first time after breaking a glass and slicing open two fingers on the shards, even if that amusement had been eventually tempered with the fact that the slash was long enough to require three stitches.

 

They had been busy, that first week – the labs had performance evaluations, which Spock seemed to detest with the same power that Jim detested monogamy; Jo had wailed long and hard for her father at the hospital and had utterly disrupted the usual childcare pattern with her bullheaded insistence; and to top it off, McCoy’s pager hadn’t stopped beeping for nearly four days. He had begun to have nightmares about it, which only made Spock’s jaw twitch at though he desperately wanted to be openly mocking and roll his eyes.

 

It had not been the best start to a month ever, despite McCoy’s intense amusement at the idea that Spock actually knew any cursing in English – he supposed either Jim or himself were probably to blame for that – although the dank weather and the complete absence of anything resembling a sun since last September meant that the pollen count involved the numerical abilities of a two-year-old to calculate. Which meant their already limited time wasn’t being limited further, at the very least, by the asthma.

 

But McCoy was ready, this time. He was ready for the entire month of June to be spent on his cell phone bill, and sneak-visits to a tiny apartment on the fourth floor with a crap view, and the odd caught call between looking after his still ridiculously active daughter and making sure no more idiots caught themselves on fire in the middle of the emergency room (middle of March, and don’t freakin’ _ask_ ). He was ready for it – ready for the constant battle, and the moments away from it all, and stopping distance of hearing the first tell-tale hitch or grind or wheeze in Spock’s breathing. Hell, he was _armed_ , with memorised medication names, and prevention times, and even beginning to recognise that vague spine-stiffness that smacked of a bad day...and when July started to settle out, he would be ready, and definitely looking forward to taking a week off work and not going outside for at least five days. To celebrate. Obviously.

 

And just being _prepared_ , and not blindsided, put him in a better frame of mind.

 

Sometimes, he’d get to see him sick – though they were still battling that one out – but the incidents of actually _being_ sick seemed to be going down, so he was letting that all slide for the moment. He bitched and moaned, of course – Spock would think him off if he didn’t – but he largely rolled his eyes and let it go. He’d pick it up again in the summer, after the flowers, and hopefully use sex as a bribe (Jim was right about _some_ things, at least) and definitely do some more shouting and ranting and raving, and get that _look_ like Spock couldn’t decide whether to kiss him or smack him, and occasionally did both.

 

But most of all...

 

It was _this_ , when Spock walked into the bar that Jim had chosen for the evening, and the first thing he looked for was not Jim, or the bar, or a sweep of the patrons, but _McCoy_. And he wouldn’t do anything – wouldn’t approach, because a drink came first; wouldn’t smile, because he just _didn’t_ ; wouldn’t call out, for the same reason – but McCoy was the first thing he would look for, and even if Spock didn’t smile for it, it made _McCoy_ smile, damn it.

 

And it was this, when he got his drink and joined them (in this instance, at another pool table with a worse tilt than the one in _Harry’s_ ) and they didn’t hug or kiss or do anything like that – but when he bent to take his first shot and begin the evening’s destruction of Jim’s confidence, McCoy would run his fingers along the leather belt and the slip of white skin across his back, feel the heat and bone and shiver of him, and just rest his hand there for a moment.

 

And Spock didn’t pluck _his_ hand away.

 

He would straighten again, and he would be relaxed and still and calm, and when he moved away, McCoy’s hand would drop again – but while he didn’t move, while he stood and watched Jim take his shot, McCoy’s hand would stay right where it was, thumb rubbing into the smooth skin of his back, and Spock would let him.

 

Spock would...let him.

 

*

 

“So,” McCoy said, when Jim turned from his defeat to find a table and order something resembling food, wearing his usual mockery of a scowl and muttering something about his dignity. “It’s a year to the day since we met.”

 

“It is,” Spock’s eyes were darker than usual, the pupils blown wide, and when McCoy rested a hand back on that narrow hip and circled his thumb into the joint again, they obliterated the brown entirely. He looked wild, feral – dangerous. Sex on legs, and he wasn’t even wearing leather tonight. “Is this the first anniversary?”

 

“I guess it is.”

 

“You guess?”

 

“Well, I didn’t realise then that this was going to be something more than another idle fling,” McCoy drawled, digging his thumb lightly into that hip again. “Don’t think I realised that for a while.”

 

“A while?”

 

McCoy shrugged. “I can’t pinpoint it. Can you?”

 

“The tenth of June,” Spock said, to McCoy’s surprise. “The medical conference.”

 

McCoy cocked his head. “Lunch on the grass,” he said slowly, “and that night after at your apartment.”

 

Something shifted in Spock’s gaze, and McCoy’s couldn’t _quite_ tell what it was yet, but he liked it. He’d learn to read it; in the meantime, he could at least appreciate it.

 

“Nights in your apartment aside, this is an anniversary, so I reckon we need to celebrate that.”

 

“And how do you propose that we do so?”

 

McCoy shrugged. “I’ve done my cleanin’ this weekend, and I’m on the early shift tomorrow, so I can send you home again before you gotta go to work.”

 

Both of Spock’s eyebrows met his hairline, and McCoy grinned at the...not-quite-surprise in his face.

 

“You are confident.”

 

“Optimistic,” McCoy drawled. “Fresh sheets on the bed, too.”

 

“I see,” Spock said, his thumb beginning to rub around the mouth of the bottle and collect the condensation. “And this requires mention, because...?”

 

“Because,” McCoy leaned in close to whisper, “there’s no damn point in gettin’ that fine ass of yours in my bed – my _double_ bed, I might add – and rippin’ you apart if you’re too seized up to appreciate it.”

 

Spock didn’t colour, but McCoy knew what to look for now, and there was a definite faint shiver around his fingers on that beer bottle. A tiny muscle, caught between the tendons of his thumb and first finger, twitched in time to his breathing.

 

“Fresh sheets,” he echoed.

 

“S’what I said,” McCoy replied lazily, hooking a finger into the top of Spock’s belt and tugging sharply enough to be felt, sharply enough to _move_ him, before dropping his hand again quickly. “’Course if you’re too tired for it...”

 

“I do not believe that I said that.” A hair too fast.

 

“Guys, c’mon, there’s a pizza deal – Spock, they’ll do olives!” Jim hollered from the bar, and McCoy smirked, holding Spock’s dilated gaze.

 

“Comin’, Jim,” he drawled, and finally the colour crept into that white face. “Later,” he added in a low tone, before turning.

 

His hand was caught, briefly, and a breath washed by his ear.

 

“Later.”

 

April ninth was a damn good day after all.


	36. Interlude One

He was instantly recognisable.

 

All the McCoy kids were, even when they weren’t kids anymore. They were all the same – dark hair, a particular kinda mouth, the way they just _carried_ themselves...and Len McCoy had always been the spittin’ image of his Daddy.

 

She could remember Len alright – a scuff-kneed six-year-old in Mrs. Kilgannon’s class, way back when Jenna herself had been doing teacher trainin’. He’d been a kinda cute kiddie, really, all scowls and fisticuffs in the playground with Jack Burns, and usually over the little girls, even back then. He’d always been the boy that the girls could twist around their little fingers.

 

All ’cept his sisters. Whole damn world knew when Len McCoy’s sisters were in town, and mostly because he went from gruff and grumpy to downright _unpleasant_. Jenna recalled those, too – the tantrums if Alice were waitin’ at the gate for him, or his momma had sent Rose to pick him up. He hadn’t liked it; he’d once clung to her hand and insisted they wait for Momma “’cause I ain’t goin’ _nowhere_ wit’ no _Alice_!”

 

His grammar hadn’t improved much.

 

Jenna couldn’t much remember him at _school_ – there were too many six-year-olds, too many noses to wipe and skinned knees to nurse, just to remember Lenny McCoy – and it was a long time since 1978, but when she’d married Eddie in the fall of 1980 and they’d moved into their little wooden box opposite the church, she’d seen them just about every morning, standing in the kitchen with the baby and watching the kids gatherin’ for the school bus, Len marched there by their Alice and seen onto the bus, because _everybody_ knew Leonard McCoy wasn’t the type to go to school unless really _made_ to go, right up until he was fourteen and decided to become _somebody_ like his grampy.

 

He’d always been the same, as far as Jenna could recall. The number of times he’d been at the bus stop with a daisy clutched in his steadily growing fist, a paltry offering to the latest girl in his life, and a big purple one for Jenna once, too, when she and Eddie had christened their baby girl in the spring of 1983. She’d been Daisy ever since – they’d christened her Kate, but she was _Daisy_ , with a big purple namesake pressed and framed on the kitchen wall ever since, brought by a student Jenna barely remembered but for his scowl and his skinned knees.

 

He was no charmer, no looker, no genius – he was nobody but another son of a Georgia man, another piece of grass in the largest damn haystack Jenna’d ever known – but Len McCoy was a man, after all of it, and one made out of a heart somewhere in that gritty, cloudy exterior. The McCoys were all like it – explosive, difficult, stubborn, and sometimes downright nasty, the lot of ’em – but they had hearts, and in the right place, and Len had always had a daisy in one hand for the pretty girls he chased down at the youth club and his various home room classes throughout the years, and a fist in the other for the boys that dared to cross him.

 

Jenna didn’t know him well enough to know when, but somewhere in there, he grew up. Suddenly, the lanky boy marched to school by his sister was gone, and there was a young man with jeans and a failing for shaving learning to drive his grampy’s pickup truck, and studying math with the grade above him (and biology with the girl next door, so Jenna heard from the local rumour mill). He didn’t smile much, and he didn’t say much to strangers, and he held doors for ladies and curses for men, and he stopped goin’ to church somewhere in the middle of it all, and David McCoy would sit in the local bar of a Friday night and say, “Well my boy David is a hard worker and all, but our Len’s gonna be a doctor one day.” And Eddie would laugh, but Jenna could remember the stubborn-mindedness of the boy and think that just maybe there was more to old David’s bragging than just being a plain ol’ father.

 

Then in the fall of 1989, Micky Bell died.

 

Everyone knew Micky. Micky had been here as long as the town; he had a picture of his late wife, Beatrice, hangin’ up on the mantlepiece that was religiously dusted and cleaned, and he kept a diary for her when he got to Heaven too, and at a hundred and five he’d still totter out to sit in his front yard and say g’morning to everyone passing for church. He couldn’t go, but the pastor would go to him every Sunday afternoon after prayers, and talk to him – and hell, everyone talked to ol’ Micky Bell. His wife was gone, God rest her soul, and he couldn’t get out much anymore, but everyone talked to Micky Bell, even if he did think he’d been in the Civil War sometimes.

 

In the fall of 1989, he fell asleep in front of the six o’clock news, and didn’t wake up again. He had gone peacefully, the doctor said, and he wouldn’t have felt a thing, and a week later, the church was packed out with the mourners.

 

He was Len McCoy’s granddaddy, and it was the last time – until today – that Jenna saw Len face-to-face. A broad-shouldered young man, with the same scowl as the six-year-old that had clung to her hand and shouted at Alice to leave him alone and he could walk home by himself, and the beginnings of the weight of adulthood.

 

“I can’t stay in Dahlo,” he’d told her then. “I gotta get out. I’m gonna go to medical school, and then I ain’t comin’ back.”

 

“Len,” she’d said, “this is your _home_.”

 

“It ain’t home,” he’d replied. “Georgia might be home, but Dahlonega ain’t. I gotta go and live, ma’am, and I can’t do it here.”

 

Jenna hadn’t known why. He’d never been all that close to his siblings, she supposed – he was just so much _younger_ , and David McCoy Jr. had always been a nasty piece of work to start with, but Len had always fiercely defended his momma from schoolyard jibes, and Jenna could remember the pride and bluster of his old man after takin’ his youngest out on fishin’ trips and huntin’ trips, and told the whole wide world about how _his_ kid was gonna be the next big thing around here, and was gonna change the world, and all the rest of it. Maybe Len was just a teenager with itchy feet, maybe David was right and brilliance never lingered long in one place, but either way –

 

A year later, he was gone. The rumour mill simply ground to a halt where Len McCoy was concerned, and while she’d been told he got married, and then divorced, and had glimpsed him briefly in the crowded wake that had been held for his own father David in the winter of 2000, she hadn’t really seen him again.

 

Until today.

 

She recognised him immediately in the shimmering wet heat of a northern Georgia summer, waiting for a photograph and cradling his new nephew to his chest with expertise. He smiled a little, but it looked forced, and he handed the bundle of blue back off to Rose, and took himself off to the shade of the trees by the road, and there she’d caught him.

 

“Len McCoy, you’ve changed.”

 

He had. He was older, and if he’d looked like his Daddy before that wasn’t nothing to how he looked now. He carried a weight to him – but also an ease, in the lines around his eyes and the confident strength in his jaw.

 

“I suppose I have, Mrs. Lane,” he said, and kissed the back of her hand like a gentleman from way back when she’d been a little girl herself. Oh, the fifties, how she missed them now.

 

They talked. She didn’t miss how he kept himself to himself, even now, avoiding the conversation (or sarcasm) of his relatives and in-laws, and the way he never entirely relaxed against the tree.

 

“Goin’ home tonight,” he’d said. “Overnight in Birmingham and Alberqueque, then straight on through ’til mornin’. Makin’ a road trip out of it.”

 

His smile was idle; his language was Georgian, but his accent had died a little, sacrificed to the west and the city life, and his suntan was not t-shirt, but suit-jacket.

 

“I’m a doctor,” he said, when she asked. “Guess my old man got that one right,” and there was none of the angry darkness about him when he spoke of David, lying some twenty feet from them in the silent confines of the churchyard. “Workin’ out in San Francisco for – I don’t know how long. A while now.”

 

“And Jocelyn?” because she remembered the redheaded storm that had disappeared off to Mississippi after him, in her momma’s clapped-out old car, and had never come back at all, not once, to the motherland. If Len had felt out of place, then Jocelyn had _been_ it: the girl might have been in born in Dahlo, but she weren’t Georgian.

 

“Joss? She’s a lawyer.”

 

She blinked, and her eyes strayed. His ring finger had a slip of whitened skin, but no ring, and Lizzie McCoy’s tight-lipped silence over Len since David died was suddenly explained.

 

“Oh,” she said.

 

“We divorced, ma’am, you might as well say it,” Len drawled, and shrugged. “We didn’t fit, and I’ve never been _ashamed_ of it.”

 

He wouldn’t have been, Jenna supposed. He hadn’t been entirely Georgian either, had he – or at least, not Georgian the way that they hovered out here around the church. Times were changing. Perhaps he wasn’t Georgian, or perhaps he’d simply adapted to the west a little more than Jenna.

 

“If you’re alone out there, you should come home.”

 

He blinked, and she realised the contradiction as soon as she’d said it. It was clear as the day – he wasn’t truly Georgian anymore, not like here, and he chuckled, ducking his head briefly.

 

“I’m not alone,” he said. “Got a house, got a partner, got friends, got a job, got a little girl, got a life out there. California’s not exactly what you’d call _smart_ , but...” he paused. “It ain’t Dahlo.”

 

She hadn’t seen Len McCoy smile in years, and it was Micky Bell’s smile. It was the contentment watching people come and go from the church and stopping for a chat; it was the comfort, despite everything, in his own skin and his own life, even while he talked about waiting to go back to his wife and Jesus and leaving behind the hours of medication every morning. She had never seen Len McCoy smile like that, and...

 

“Who is she?”

 

He cocked his head. “Who?”

 

“Your partner.”

 

He shook his head. “Aw hell no, ma’am. You’ll get me into trouble. Even my momma don’t know.”

 

“Leonard, please. I’m a teacher. I know how to keep secrets.”

 

He smirked. “Yeah, I suppose you do. You must hear a lot of ’em. What grade is it now?”

 

“No distractions, young man. Who is she?”

 

“Lessee,” he peeled off from the tree long enough to locate his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans, and unfolded a small, battered photograph bleached from sunlight and overexamination. He handed it over with a, “There y’go. Last Christmas or thereabouts, musta been.”

 

It was –

 

Jenna blinked and refocused, as if the world had swum and crystallised again before her very eyes.

 

It was a cream couch with a red throw over it, in the low light of an early morning or a late afternoon, the bare wooden floors and thin door just out of sight indicating an apartment in – probably San Francisco. And it was of the man on it, caught in the act of glancing up from a book, all dark eyes and dark hair and white, white skin, feet crossed at the ankles in slacks and dark socks – a monochromatic _smudge_ on the pale surroundings...

 

“Living in sin, huh?” she offered, handing it back.

 

“More than you know,” he said cheerfully.

 

“Well,” she said. And then, “Well,” again.

 

It explained...did it? She wasn’t sure. He’d spent his whole life offering daisies to the girls around the town, and Lizzie had been all puffed up with pride when he’d married Jocelyn, even if it had been way out in San Francisco and Alice had refused to fly and made them go by car – but then he’d divorced her too, and now offered a photograph of this dark-haired young man as a reason for the smile, and the lack of shame over breaking his vows, and – San Francisco, he’d said, was home. And out there, right now, was this young man, waiting on Len McCoy to come home.

 

Had he known? Had it been more than Dahlonega not being home, or was that the otherworldly strangeness of California sinking through the Georgian in him and corrupting him? Would he recover, or stay the same –  and yet...

 

He simply _waited_. Len had always been the fierce, defensive type, even as a child, and the way he simply lounged and waited for her to say something was...

 

He _had_ changed.

 

“Well,” she said. “No wonder your momma don’t know.”

 

He simply shrugged.

 

“Children should always be allowed their secrets,” she said loftily, and he smirked. His smile was Micky’s, but his smirk – that almost sinister curve – was Lizzie’s, Lizzie-on-the-warpath. He had not lost his ferocity, then. “I feel old, you know. You used to be as high as my hips and now you’re a man.”

 

Rose called his name – shrieked it, really, a woman with a bundle of blue and a husband as fat as she was loud, and the McCoys and their mess of children and rough interaction had grown up. Jenna felt _old_ , just from the stubble on the man’s jaw, and the loss of the baby fat and the sticky fingers that used to tug on her sleeve and show her the latest spider he’d captured outta the cloakrooms.

 

He disappeared into the church, bowing to the corralling of his eldest sister, and Jenna lost sight of him – the man, not the boy. Len had gone, and she was unsure who had replaced him, but certain that she would never learn.

 

He would not be coming back to Dahlonega. The Lord had seen another path fit for him, rightly or wrongly, and it was his task to walk it the best he could. His life, his _home_ , was elsewhere.

 

*

 

The village had died, in the intervening years. The house that overlooked it was rotting at the beams, and the farming land overgrown and ready for the concrete mixers to come from the city. Sendai would swallow them whole; the past would be buried.

 

The past did not live here, beyond the clumsy carvings in the tree bark from hands that had withered to dust. A boy still proclaimed his love for a girl in the wood; they drifted, ashes in the wind, somewhere in the east.

 

The cherry blossom was still standing a lonely vigil at the base of the property. Once, a village had stood in the path of its petals: generations had plucked the _sakura_ from the branches to offer, paltry gifts of affection that their tongues couldn’t form. The tree had rained white and pink on thousands of nameless, faceless children; its wood bore the scars now of their messy lives and torn webs, and a few names lived on in the carvings made by childish hands. And so life had run – the nameless had aged, reformed, moulded, and their webs beget more of the faceless and the nameless, until history became one long season after another, never and always changing and changed.

 

The bark still told of the undying devotion of a young widower to his late wife; the cemetery told the rest, of the sixty-three years between their deaths, and the memorial erected by their only son. The time had been long enough ago, and the village still isolated enough, that her name became synonymous with beauty, perfection, and temperence; his, with wisdom and poise as he aged, sitting under the trees for decades and tending to the cherries in her absence, and waiting for news from the gods.

 

But time changed. The city was rising in the east; the sun falling over the enemy in the west, and the world was waiting. Their son had gone away, and returned in a medalled uniform with a bride from the southern islands on his arm, and the first stirrings had begun. The children no longer came to pluck at the flowers; the wood remained undisturbed, and the war outside raged.

 

The bodies returned in coffins, dead at the hands of those who challenged the might of the emperor.

 

The sons of the village bled away, one by one, and the daughters waited with _sakura_ in their hair and heavy anger staining their painted mouths. The serene acceptance of fate that had shrouded the widower and his lost wife was wafted aside, and a new rage brought in. The widower’s first grandson was born to a soldier and a traitor, and the midwife’s hands were bloodied.

 

The children returned, one by one, and carved messages of hate. The world had leaked in; it would never retreat. The blossoms were trampled into the mud under military boots; the painted ladies were bitter and twisted.

 

The widower’s first grandson captured and destroyed his young bride on the steps of the temple, their unborn child dying with her. The second grandson re-emerged from the bulging cities with books and studies to take the home that was passed to him, a wife with herbs and a frown trailing in his wake, and the cherry tree was surrounded thereafter with the stench of science and the lonely solemnity of their own children: a son and a daughter, with the same sombre expressions and war-scarred history passed down from their forefathers. The daughter remained; the son did not.

 

The widower lay forgotten in his tomb; his young wife a mere whisper in the air, of a time lost beyond the fog of war and humanity.  The madness of a people ripped apart by conflict had infected them – the village, the family, the very air – and the scientist mixed her potions and healed the screaming babies, bringing life, but at a price of severe solemnity. She died; her wisdom was not revered, but spoken of in hushed whispers and the stinking aura of fear.

 

The city rose in the east, ever higher.

 

The son returned. He carried none of the serenity of his forefathers, but a foreigner on his arm and a confidence borne of study, borne of wealth, and borne of the rigidly enforced lessons of history. The scratches of love in the bark of the tree were long since gone; the foreigner never had a name.

 

The cherry tree survived; the widower’s tree did not. In the early dawn of an icy winter, the foreigner came down from the house with a fury in her eyes that clanked like the medals on the chests of the forefathers of her husband. The boy at her side waited, the mud staining his shoes, and reached to touch the bark of the tree, rubbing the mark where his great-grandfather had carved the name, in grief, of a woman lost too soon.

 

His stone-faced father, the stone-faced son of a mathematician, son of a soldier, son of a widower, watched, and said, “So American.”

 

The foreigners left for the final time, and the city breached the horizon to the east.


End file.
